Final rehearsals are now underway for the Queensland Youth Orchestras (QYO) upcoming performance of Mahler’s Symphony No 6 at the state’s Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University, on Saturday 23 August 2025.
Whilst the music may be dark and foreboding, the young players – aged from 8 to 25 years – are full of excitement to take to the stage.
For 13-year-old Gold Coast violinist Alessandro Martinese, this upcoming performance follows on from a stint overseas. He’s recently returned from Italy where he performed at the Museo del Violino (the museum that pays homage to legendry violin maker Antonio Stradivari).
“The most exciting thing is that this will be my first time playing a whole Mahler Symphony … it is such a long and complex piece of music to perform (nearly one-and-a-half hours) which makes it very demanding and quite tiring!” said Alessandro.
He’ll be joined on stage by more than 100 QYO musicians – among them 19-year-old Hilary Davis. She is QYO’s Principal Double Bass player and a Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University student.
“As one of the older orchestra members, I love being a guidepost for the younger kids but also ensuring they feel like they are equal and valued members of the orchestra,” said Hilary. “Watching the excitement of the younger kids is contagious. Their passion makes the orchestra stronger and closer.”
The maestro that brings them all together is QYO Artistic Director and world-renowned conductor, Simon Hewett. Despite Mahler 6 being known to many as the ‘tragic’ symphony, Hewett urges audiences to look for its beauty.
“Far from being depressing or grim, I find it an incredibly hopeful and empowering work,” he said. “After accepting our own mortality, we have to ask ourselves another question: How do we want to live?”
Hewett’s dedication to his role extends well beyond the baton – he’s even crafted the wooden box required for the famous hammer blow in the final movement of the symphony. Eagle-eyed audience members will, no doubt, marvel at both his conducting and carpentry!
At the height of his career as Music Director of the Vienna Opera, Mahler was celebrated, successful, and deeply in love with his wife, Alma, and their two young daughters. Yet, in this time of personal and professional fulfilment, he composed his darkest and most uncompromising work – the foreboding 6th Symphony.
The symphony’s final movement features three infamous “blows of fate”, symbolised by strikes of a massive wooden hammer. Mahler instructed the sound to evoke “a massive, wooden, dull crack, like a tree being felled by an axe.”
Tragically, within a year of the symphony’s premiere, Mahler endured three devastating blows of his own: the death of his eldest daughter, his dismissal from the Vienna Opera, and a diagnosis of a fatal heart condition.
Queensland Youth Symphony: Mahler 6
Performance: Saturday 23 August 2025
Information and Bookings: www.qyo.org.au
Images: Queensland Youth Orchestras – photo by Stephanie Do Rozario | Simon Hewett – photo by Christopher Pitstock