After having to rely on their exceptional home-grown talent since the pandemic struck, Sydney Symphony Orchestra certainly cast a wide net to bring in their first two international artists in two years – a Peruvian conductor and a Macedonian pianist.

And their choices could not have been better. Miguel Harth-Bedoya provided fire, colour and flair in his reading of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony while Simon Trpčeski put on a performance of Brahms’s Piano Concerto No 1 that will live long in the memories of SSO fans.

And to top that he unselfishly turned his encore into a chamber music gem, inviting Concertmaster Andrew Haveron, cellist Catherine Hewgill and violist Tobias Breider to join him for the Andante from Brahms’ Piano Quartet No 3, Op. 6.

Conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya.

The night took off, literally, with a world premiere of Australian composer Jessica Wells’s Uplift, a short piece commissioned by the SSO as part of their 50 Fanfares project and inspired by the poem High Flight (An Airman’s Ecstasy) by 19-year-old Royal Canadian Air Force pilot John Gillespie Magee who took a Spitfire to 33, 000ft on a test flight.

The poem starts:...