I’m sure there’s at least a handful of solid jokes about the rather fateful combination of a requiem being performed on election day, but, putting the temptation for punnery to the side, this wound up being a moving performance of a classic piece, with the added bonus of some Stravinsky and Debussy as well.

The Queensland Symphony Orchestra performs Mozart’s Requiem, May 2022. Photo © Peter Wallis.

This concert (with the rather strangely prosaic title ‘Mozart’s Requiem’) kicked off with Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments, functioning as an overture of sorts. First published in a special issue of La Revue musicale that featured tributes on the death of Claude Debussy (which, very incidentally, also included a piece that as a guitarist is near and dear to my heart – Falla’s epochal Homenaje), Stravinsky’s Symphonies is work that’s positively bristling with Debussy-ish subtleties of timbres. Here, the wind and brass were, obviously, at the forefront, but while this was mostly a very good performance, several spots such as the gentle clouds of harmony that flitter through the piece...