Melbourne Symphony Orchestra — Attraction in Melbourne

I received an email to post a review after the Mahler 3 concert on 14 March.

I’m not sure if Google reviews is the best place to provide a review of the performance, but more broadly the Hamer Hall is such a second rate venue for this world class orchestra. I know this is a review of the MSO, but they need to consider whether this is the best venue for their art.

The sound is very poor, the weird space at the back of the stage where the organ should be (but isn’t) is such an eyesore, and the auditorium is simply not friendly to audiences. The first thing you see as you walk into the Hall are people holding up iPads saying not to take photos of the performance. Why is that the priority?

It just feels like a really nasty environment.

As if the orchestra actually doesn’t want people to come.

In relation to the concert, It felt like the subtitles were being operated by somebody who had never done it before. Throughout the concert a code kept flashing on the back wall. I assumed it was related to the subtitle machine, but it was incredibly distracting. It felt a bit like amateur hour.

I’m really sorry that this is such a poor review of the MSO, but this is a professional orchestra, and it just seems like (beyond the performers) everyone else is operating at an amateur level.

And why not allow the audience to take photographs at the beginning, or the end of the performance; we live in an era of social media, and any publicity about the experience would benefit the MSO. I recently attended a performance of Mahler 5 at the Sydney Opera house and the atmosphere was totally different. It felt warm and welcoming to the audience. They even made an announcement at the beginning that audience members were welcome to take photographs and videos at the beginning, and the end of the performance, and during the bows, and to feel free to post it on social media to share...

Belated review of the Season opening gala on March 21st: Jaime conducts The Planets. This was a fantastic concert, my first time seeing the MSO and first time at the Hamer Hall. Whilst all the music and performances were top notch quality, the vigorous peformance of The Planets was exceptional. This work is an old favourite, I have many recordings and have seen it played several times in England, but the Jaime/MSO performance tops them all. It was truly marvellous. My wife and I were sat to the right of centre, so we had a chance to appreciate how much effort the double basses put into the performance. One lady in particular was so impressive. She was really going for it on the Mars section. This piece requires a lot of dynamics and Jaime and the MSO got in bang on. Absolutely masterful. The only tiny flaw was that the choral fade at the very end of the work ended a little bit abruptly, but it must be very difficult to acheive this perfectly. Meanwhile, I can't end without mentioning the wonderful performance of 'Earth', by Deborah Cheetham Fraillon. This was absolutely stunning. It brought my wife to tears, and we hope that this piece will appear on a CD sometime soon. Absolutely brilliant stuff. The first part of the piece where the strings came in very high, made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Superb! Finally, the Hamer Hall itself is a fantastic sounding venue, with quite wide and very comfortable seating. We both appreciated this tremendously, as bieng uncomfortable can really take the edge off the overall enjoyment. All in all, a wonderful experience. Congratulations Jaime and MSO, and...

Obviously, people need to be reminded constantly about turning off phones. The first 1 went off during the slow movement (a real mood killer!) and the 2nd 1 was at the start of the pp section building up to the ff finale - this one couldn’t be turned off for at least 20secs. After lockdown I’ve felt keen to support events at the arts centre but unfortunately they haven’t been very enjoyable. The use of mics for chats to the audience (including Joseph Caleja last week) is so contrary to why I choose to attend: to experience a truly acoustic experience. The modern piano concerto which preceded the Beethoven 5th was not only an unfortunate choice aesthetically but was talked up so much by both the pianist & conductor that audience expectations were not met as evidenced by the mild applause. The conductor back-praised the concerto and reminded us that Beethoven too was radical during his time and implied that this (in my opinion 2nd rate) commissioned piano piece could one day join the exalted ranks of iconic works like LBV’s 5th. His pre-speech about the symphony we had all came to hear was childish & derogatory and I really didn’t appreciate his vocalisation of the pa-pa-pa-pa motive, along with a rambling, boring account of what we were about to experience. And what followed musically was just ok. I’d never heard this symphony played live before so my expectations were high. Thank God Ludwig Van’s genius can speak to hearts in spite of this particular, uncommitted...