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.

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.

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.

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.