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Michelle Wood's music for a rain ...

If there has been one thing to emerge from 2020, it’s that we’ve all had a lot of time to contemplate what is truly important to us… and how to cope with a very new v ...

A thousand-and-one stories to sa ...

In November 2023, Jaime Martín will lead the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in a massive performance of Scheherazade by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. This extraordinary orc ...

Handel’s eternal masterpiece, bu ...

Though you will certainly recognise most of it. This is the Messiah’s “best bits” as Sir Andrew Davis affectionately calls it. Handel’s oratorio celebrating the life, ...

Humperdinck’s triumphant achieve ...

MSO Chief Conductor Sir Andrew Davis ranks Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel in his top 5 favourite operas. What is it about this fairy tale classic that keeps both chi ...

His Excellency Sri Sultan Hameng ...

On Tuesday 8 October His Excellency Sri Sultan Hamengku Buwono X of Yogyakarta, Indonesia, visited the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s headquarters for a special cross ...

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Mahler's Eighth Symphony

Gustav Mahler knew from the beginning his 8th Symphony was something special. The composer wrote to a friend, the Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg in 1906: “All my o ...

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Michelle Wood’s Top 5 Internatio ...

Travelling for work is a unique privilege in any profession, and in my job with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra I’m exceptionally lucky. Being a full-time classical ...

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Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony

Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony – known as the Pastoral Symphony – is one of the few works by the composer with a ‘programmatic’ element, with the music representing (in t ...

Edward Elgar and his fourteen co ...

With a cigar in hand, one night Edward Elgar sat down at his piano and began to play. As he drifted into oblivion, his wife interrupted telling him “Edward, that’s a ...