WHAT’S ON
Morning Music
The final concert of the year on 4 December brings a festive close to the series with a thrilling selection of works, including Tchaikovsky’s dazzling Violin Concerto and York Bowen’s expressive Viola Sonata, promising a joyful and inspiring morning of music.
QYS Concert Series: Visions of the Supernatural
Horn Soloists:
Thomas Ferreira Montague, Zac Hayes, Lachlan Smith, Craig King
Franz Schubert - Der Doppelgänger
Robert Schumann - Konzertstück for Four Horns and Orchestra, Op. 86
Hector Berlioz - Symphonie Fantastique
Step into a world where dreams blur with nightmares and the line between reality and imagination dissolves. The Queensland Youth Symphony (QYS), under the direction of Simon Hewett, invites you on a journey through love, longing, and delirious joy - a concert that explores the extremes of human emotion in sound.
The evening begins with Schubert’s haunting Der Doppelgänger. Composed only months before Schubert’s death, this eerie reflection on identity and mortality captures the horror of confronting one’s ghostly double - a moment suspended between life and death.
Schumann’s Konzertstück for Four Horns and Orchestra is a dazzling display of Romantic exuberance and technical brilliance. Written in 1849 to showcase the revolutionary new valved horn, this work pushes the instrument, and its players, to the edge of possibility.
The stage then transforms for one of the most intoxicating works in the orchestral repertoire - Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. Long before rock and roll or psychedelic art, Berlioz chronicled his opium-fuelled visions in this feverish masterpiece: a hallucinatory tale of obsessive love, despair, and death. Across five movements, he leads us through a dreamscape of passion, execution, and the grotesque dance of witches, where his own musical alter ego meets both ecstasy and oblivion.
Morning Music
Morning Music at The Old Museum offers an hour of fine music performed by Queensland’s most talented young musicians in the historic Concert Hall of The Old Museum. With an intimate atmosphere and outstanding performances, this mid-week morning concert series is a must for music lovers.
The 2026 four concert series will feature outstanding soloists and chamber groups, presenting a wide variety of works from across the classical repertoire. Each concert offers audiences a chance to experience the artistry, creativity, and dedication of Queensland’s next generation of musicians.
QYS Concert Series: Visions of Nature
Ludvig van Beethoven - Symphony No. 6, Op. 68, Pastoral
Richard Strauss - Eine Alpensinfoni
From the gentle flow of a country stream to the sweeping majesty of a mountaintop, this concert celebrates nature as both muse and mirror - a reflection of our deepest emotions, our struggles, and our sense of wonder. Join the Queensland Youth Symphony (QYS) and conductor Simon Hewett for Visions of Nature, an evening of two great symphonic journeys that explore humanity’s relationship with the natural world - and the worlds within ourselves.
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, the Pastoral, opens the program with scenes of rustic simplicity and serenity. More than a description of the countryside, Beethoven’s Pastoral is a portrait of gratitude - of finding joy and renewal in nature’s presence. From the bubbling brook and cheerful village dance to the storm that clears and restores peace, Beethoven paints not with words but with sound, offering an enduring vision of harmony between humanity and the earth.
QYS then ascends the vast and awe-inspiring heights of Richard Strauss’ Eine Alpensinfonie (An Alpine Symphony). At first glance, the work depicts a single day’s climb - from sunrise to summit, storm to twilight. But beneath the vivid landscapes lies something far deeper. Composed in 1915, in the shadow of war and following the death of Strauss’s friend Gustav Mahler, the Alpine Symphony becomes both elegy and confession: a requiem for a vanishing world, and a personal credo from a lifelong atheist who found meaning not in divinity, but in human fellowship and endurance.
As night falls, Strauss’s climbers descend from the peak, their theme returning in the faintest whisper - a quiet expression of gratitude, and perhaps, acceptance. In this final breath, the Alpine Symphony reminds us that even amid the immensity of nature and the darkness of the unknown, solace can be found in companionship, courage, and the shared ascent of life itself.
Morning Music
Morning Music at The Old Museum offers an hour of fine music performed by Queensland’s most talented young musicians in the historic Concert Hall of The Old Museum. With an intimate atmosphere and outstanding performances, this mid-week morning concert series is a must for music lovers.
The 2026 four concert series will feature outstanding soloists and chamber groups, presenting a wide variety of works from across the classical repertoire. Each concert offers audiences a chance to experience the artistry, creativity, and dedication of Queensland’s next generation of musicians.
QYS Concert Series: Nocturnal Visions
Gustav Mahler - Symphonie Nr. 7
In Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 7, night becomes both a landscape and a state of mind - a realm where dreams, memories, and illusions blur into reality. With Simon Hewett conducting, the Queensland Youth Symphony (QYS) delves into one of Mahler’s most visionary and enigmatic works, a symphony that marks the twilight of romanticism and the dawn of modernity.
Often called Mahler’s Night Symphony, the Seventh begins in darkness. Its opening movement unfolds like a nocturnal journey - shadowy, restless, and full of foreboding energy. Two Nachtmusik movements (literally night music) follow, each revealing a different face of the night: one a mysterious forest filled with distant horns and ghostly echoes, the other a tender serenade glowing with moonlight and warmth. Between them lies a fleeting, spectral scherzo - a dance of phantoms, elegant and grotesque in equal measure.
But as dawn breaks in the finale, Mahler pulls the curtain back on the dream. Bursting into daylight with a riot of brass and energy, he nods to Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg - a work free from gods and myths, grounded instead in real, human life. Here, Mahler awakens from the long Romantic dream. The illusions, the archetypes, the grand emotions of the night all dissolve into a radiant, ironic, and utterly human celebration of existence itself.
Morning Music
Morning Music at The Old Museum offers an hour of fine music performed by Queensland’s most talented young musicians in the historic Concert Hall of The Old Museum. With an intimate atmosphere and outstanding performances, this mid-week morning concert series is a must for music lovers.
The 2026 four concert series will feature outstanding soloists and chamber groups, presenting a wide variety of works from across the classical repertoire. Each concert offers audiences a chance to experience the artistry, creativity, and dedication of Queensland’s next generation of musicians.
For enquiries and group/bus bookings
please contact: Brianna Butters - brianna@qyo.org.au (07) 3257 3028
String Sensations: John Curro National Youth Concerto Competition Finals Concert
For over five decades, this prestigious event has provided a platform for exceptional emerging musicians, many of whom have gone on to achieve national and international recognition.
Each year, three of the nation’s most talented young string soloists are selected through a rigorous audition process to perform concerto works with the Queensland Youth Symphony. This highly anticipated concert showcases the next generation of virtuosos, offering audiences a glimpse of Australia’s brightest musical future.
With an impressive legacy of past winners including Jane Peters, Richard Tognetti, Nicholas Milton, Li Wei Qin, Emily Sun, and Ray Chen, the JCNYCC continues to inspire and nurture the stars of tomorrow.
Finale
The Queensland Youth Orchestras (QYO) Finale Concert is the crowning celebration of an extraordinary 60th anniversary year of music-making. Join us as we bring the 2026 season to a spectacular close with performances from all eight QYO ensembles, featuring over 540 of Queensland’s talented young musicians.
The concert will shine a spotlight on Junior String Ensembles 1 & 2, conducted by Chen Yang and Cherie Deacon; Wind Ensemble, led by David Law; Queensland Youth Orchestra 3, conducted by Rachel Howley; Big Band, directed by Bohdan Davidson; Queensland Youth Orchestra 2, conducted by David Deacon; Wind Symphony, led by Rob McWilliams; and the Queensland Youth Symphony, under the baton of Simon Hewett.
From the elegance of strings to the power of winds and the energy of jazz, this thrilling program celebrates the full scope of QYO’s vibrant musical community.
Morning Music
Morning Music at The Old Museum offers an hour of fine music performed by Queensland’s most talented young musicians in the historic Concert Hall of The Old Museum. With an intimate atmosphere and outstanding performances, this mid-week morning concert series is a must for music lovers.
The 2026 four concert series will feature outstanding soloists and chamber groups, presenting a wide variety of works from across the classical repertoire. Each concert offers audiences a chance to experience the artistry, creativity, and dedication of Queensland’s next generation of musicians.
For enquiries and group/bus bookings
please contact: Brianna Butters - brianna@qyo.org.au (07) 3257 3028
String Sensations
Celebrate a milestone in Australian music as the John Curro National Youth Concerto Competition (JCNYCC) marks its 50th anniversary. For half a century, this prestigious event has celebrated Australia’s finest young string players, launching the careers of many who have gone on to achieve national and international acclaim.
Experience this landmark event as three of the nation’s most talented young musicians, selected through a rigorous nationwide audition, take the stage to perform dazzling string concertos. Accompanied by the Queensland Youth Symphony, these young virtuosos will impress you with their artistry and passion.
The JCNYCC boasts an illustrious list of past winners, including Jane Peters (1978), Richard Tognetti (1980), Nicholas Milton (1985), Li Wei Qin (1993), Emily Sun (2008), and Ray Chen (2002). As we celebrate this 50-year legacy, you’ll witness history in the making with performances by the next generation of world-class musicians.
Morning Music
A special event on 9 October welcomes finalists from the John Curro National Youth Concerto Competition, offering a rare chance to hear some of Australia’s most promising young string players as they prepare for the nation’s premier competition for young soloists.
Mahler 6
Music that hits hard!
Simon Hewett leads the Queensland Youth Symphony (QYS) in a powerful and heart-wrenching performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 6, often referred to as the “Tragic Symphony”.
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 fulfillment, 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.
A deeply superstitious man, Mahler may have wondered if he had tempted fate. Alma later reflected, “In the 6th Symphony, Mahler described himself and his downfall: ‘He was the hero on whom fall three blows of fate, the last of which fells him, as a tree is felled’”.
This is Mahler at his most profound and prophetic – a must-hear journey into the depths of human resilience and tragedy.
Open Day
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Morning Music
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Empire
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Morning Music
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Fundraising Gala
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
