Mahler #1 | Christ Church Camerata | Newcastle Music Festival Finale Concert

Christ Church Camerata are taking the stage at the Harold Lobb Concert Hall on Sunday 16 August, and they're bringing Mahler's Symphony No. 1 with them. It's the finale of the Newcastle Music Festival, so it's the big closer for the whole run. Dr David Banney is conducting, and the Camerata are performing the symphony in an arrangement for chamber orchestra, which means the full scale of the original is scaled down for a smaller ensemble. The original version expands to include wind, brass and percussion, and this arrangement keeps that epic scoring intact even with fewer players on stage.

Before the Mahler, the programme opens with a colourful work for strings by Adam Manning, a lecturer at the University of Newcastle. It's a local connection worth noting: Manning's piece premiered with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra back in 2024, so this is a chance to hear it closer to home. Between the two, you've got a contemporary string piece and a Romantic symphony, so the afternoon covers a fair bit of ground.

For those who aren't too familiar with the composer, Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) was an Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He's often described as a bridge between the 19th-century tradition and the early 20th-century modernism that followed. His symphonies and song cycles were frequently controversial when they first appeared, and he went on to influence the Second Viennese School, Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten. Symphony No. 1 is generally seen as his first real mark on the world of music, built on the tradition of his hero, Beethoven.

The concert is supported by The Newcastle Herald. It runs from 2:30 pm to 4:00 pm at the Harold Lobb Concert Hall, Newcastle Conservatorium, on the corner of Laman and Auckland Streets in Newcastle, NSW 2300.