National Symphony Orchestra
Carlos Kalmar, conductor
John Finucane, clarinet
Greg Crowley, bassoon

Mahler Adagio from Symphony No. 10
Richard Strauss Duet Concertino
Schubert Symphony No. 8, ‘Unfinished’
Josef Strauss Music of the Spheres

Last thoughts and leave-takings promise an evening of heightened emotion, pent-up drama and soaring poetry in valedictory works by Mahler, Schubert and Richard Strauss.

Stepping into the limelight, National Symphony Orchestra former principal clarinet, John Finucane, and principal bassoon, Greg Crowley, come together for Richard Strauss’s last instrumental work, the delightful, watercolour-delicate Duet Concertino, in which the two solo voices cavort, carouse and caress with a light, lilting, altogether infectious liveliness.

A conductor of ‘verve and passion’ (ArtsATL), Carlos Kalmar returns to the NSO podium for the aching heart-on-sleeve Adagio from Mahler’s Tenth (and final) Symphony. Composed in a state of concern over his failing health and despair at the discovery of his wife’s affair, the symphony was left unfinished on his death, only its darkly majestic Adagio completed. A movement of extreme emotional intensity, its heft is matched by its heart, both qualities coming together at its finale when tumult and suffering gives way to release and silence.

Also left ‘Unfinished’ was Schubert’s Eighth Symphony. Considered by many the first truly Romantic symphony, it’s a bracing contest between violent storms and tranquil peacefulness expressed in richly orchestrated images set down with painterly flourishes and flair.

Brother of ‘the waltz king’ Johann Strauss II – who declared his sibling ‘the more gifted of us two; I am merely the more popular’ – Josef Strauss was blessed with the family’s gift for crafted eloquence. His late Sphärenklänge (Music of the Spheres) begins in a celestial realm of mystery before elegant melodies bring proceedings down to earth and into the ballroom for a spry, sparkling waltz of winning light and lyricism.