The atmosphere from an expectant audience was palpable on Saturday 18th February at QPAC’s Concert Hall, which was packed with classical-music lovers and supporters of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra (QSO). It promised to be a spectacular 70th Anniversary celebratory evening, opening with Wagner's mighty Tannhauser overture and the commencement of the inaugural season with Alondra de la Parra as Conductor and first Musical Director of QSO.

It has been 70 years since Wagner's Tannhauser opened QSO's first concert in Brisbane in 1947. Coming after World War II, it was Queensland’s first tentative step into the arts, but even then Brisbane’s burgeoning was a source of optimism. Today, Brisbane is a culturally vibrant city. We celebrate the diversity of the local community, and support both mainstream and more alternative tastes through many cultural outlets and venues such as the QPAC and QSO, and of course our beloved 4ZZZ.

Only forty-five musicians played in the Queensland Symphony Orchestra seventy years ago, but it has now expanded to seventy-one permanent musicians with hopes to expand to an eighty-eight musician world-class symphony orchestra through generous donations from sponsors, donors, and QSO subscribers. Despite its seventy years, QSO is spry and lithe. QSO continues to evolve by hiring a female Conductor and QSO's first Musical Director, Mexican-born Alondra de la Parra who is already proving to be a popular choice judging from her rapturous reception on Saturday night.

The concert exploded from the opening surpassing all audience expectations, and drowning the concert hall with a frenzy of violins, percussion, brass, and woodwind. Tannhauser is best heard in a vast concert hall such as the QPAC where the walls, roof, and audience reverberate in Wagner's passionate musical expression of a woman sacrificing herself for the man she loves. As the last chord of Wagner died away, the expert chimes of Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No.1, expressively played by Zhang Zho in her Australian debut, rose clear and lyrical.

With the lamentations of Mahler's Symphony No. 1 in D to close the night the audience of the QSO are now hungry to devour more in the 70th Anniversary series for 2017 with Fritz and Howard Saturday 11th March. I recommend any appreciators of classical music sign up for their QSO tickets now or better still become a QSO subscriber and help build QSO to world-class proportions.

 Dr Gemma Regan