Umberto Clerici must be ambidextrous. Or something. I mean how can you play the cello and conduct the orchestra at the same time?

If you want to see how he does that make sure you have tickets for Queensland Symphony Orchestra’s (QSO) Closing Gala in November 2024. Entitled Umberto & Natsuko it will feature chief conductor Umberto Clerici and concertmaster Natsuko Yoshimoto who will be starring on the violin alongside her boss on the cello.

He will play and conduct in the same concert but possibly not at the same time although with him you never know. He is crazy talented, enthusiastic and has a flair that is reflected in a quite incredible program for 2024.

That program was launched recently following Clerici Conducts Mahler in the Concert Hall at QPAC, a concert that will go down as one of the best of 2023. Clerici is continuing a tradition of doing Mahler symphonies in order begun by his predecessor, Mexican maestro Alondra de la Parra. While she and Clerici are very different in some ways, they do share a certain Latin intensity.

Both liked a chat too which is good. Umberto Clerici loves to talk to the audience and explain things which his audience loves right back.

And when he takes to the podium, he is intense and a pleasure to watch in full flight.

He has embraced his role at QSO and he has embraced the state and plans to really get around Queensland next year.

Season 2024 features a bold new regional touring program which, for the first time, will see the full symphony Orchestra perform in Cairns, Port Douglas, Townsville and Toowoomba as well as St George in Outback Queensland. This new program will run parallel to the established annual Gladstone and Chinchilla, Miles, Roma and Tara tours, with additional visits to the Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast and Redlands, reconfirming QSO’s position as the most travelled orchestra in the country.

In total, QSO will stage more than 150 performances in 2024, with Umberto Clerici at the podium for 21 concerts. Forty-five of these performances will showcase the wonderful opera and ballet repertoire as QSO performs for their partner companies including Queensland Ballet and Opera Queensland.

Alongside the concert program, QSO continues the just-launched warrma pippa, an extraordinary multi-year project in partnership with friend and colleague, the acclaimed didgeridoo superstar William Barton. This project seeks the next generation of First Nations storytellers and song-makers to collaborate and express a Song to Country. warrma piipa: ngatji patija; kutu patija; ngata waru (Songbook: My Story; Your Story; Our Journey) is a unique multi-artform project that weaves stories, language, song, music and creative expression into a cross-Queensland journey composition.

And as I mentioned in a coup for fans, Umberto Clerici combines baton and bow in the season Closing Gala. But there’s a lot to get through before then.

Sometimes you flick through a season program stifling yawns but there is something tantalising on every page of QSO’s 2024 Season program.

Clerici says his aim is “to create a web of interconnected programs in which each concert has a clear and unique storyline that develops through a unified arc”.

“While this season may look slightly different, I hope audiences will take a leap of faith and continue to trust me on this journey, to continue to be curious and explore unknown musical paths, safe in the knowledge that there will be many things I can guarantee you will discover and love,” he says.

The 2024 repertoire will centre on Romanticism with music from the great German Romantics – Mahler, Strauss, Brahms, Mendelssohn and Schumann – as well as Puccini, Berlioz, Sibelius, Dvořák, Smetana and others.

“The Romantic movement is essentially a rejection of the principles of order, harmony, balance and rationality that typifies the 2023 season, the Classical era,” Clerici insists. “We will emphasise inspiration, emotions, subjectivity and the primacy of the individual, and we will continue our Mahler and Mozart late-symphonies cycles, starting the Maestro Series with Mahler Symphony No. 7. The philosophical theme is the Outer World. For me, this is music which describes the world in many ways, from the contemplative Rain Tree by Takemitsu, to the new piece by our beloved Paul Dean dedicated to the Great Barrier Reef, as well as the majestic Become Ocean by the American composer John Luther Adams, who won both a Grammy and Pulitzer Prize for this monumental work.”

QSO chief executive Yarmilla Alfonzetti is as enthusiastic as Clerici and the pair took to the stage together at the beginning of the recent Mahler concert to spruik their program. Alfonzetti reckons QSO will be “Queensland’s primary music maker in 2024” and from the looks of the program she may be right about that.

And for Mahler fans the Maestro Series opens in February with Umberto Clerici leading the Orchestra in the magnificent Mahler’s Symphony No.7, continuing his Mahler Cycle which commenced with the recent with the Mahler 6. 

The powerful concert theme with Mozart’s Jupiter in March alongside pianist Andrea Lam, before conductor Giordano Bellincampi steps in to lead the Orchestra for the Opera Gala.

At the end of March and under the baton of choral specialist Brett Weymark, four dazzling soloists and the Brisbane Chamber Choir will perform with QSO in Messiah An Easter Passion, a timeless work of reverence, featuring Handel’s most loved masterpieces.

One of the highlights of this huge year of music will be three concerts in May, marking 150 years of Brisbane’s extraordinary St Stephens Cathedral. Taking place in the Cathedral, Umberto will conduct Mozart’s Mass, joined by four soloists and the Brisbane Chamber Choir. The concert opens with Lili Boulanger’s Psalm 24, a joyous prayer to the earth, with the enduring sanctity of these pieces creating an unmissable music event on a majestic scale.

I must say I’m also looking forward to hearing Australian Festival of Chamber Music artistic director Jack Liebeck playing the violin and performing Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending. That will be exquisite.

But as they say in the ads … wait, there’s more! So much more.

One of QSO’s concerts next year is entitled Casino Royale and it won’t feature Umberto Clerici conducting but instead, the talented Vanessa Scammell who will conduct the orchestra as they playing the music of the Bond film Casino Royale. Being a Bond fan, this is beyond exciting and it will be wonderful seeing Daniel Craig doing his thing again on the big screen with the QSO playing David Arnold’s thrilling score in sync with the movie. That’s in March at the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre.

And I love the themes that Clerici has masterminded for next year, like Vignettes: A Morning in France next October featuring Debussy, Gershwin (An American in Paris) and, among others, Satie. Gorgeous idea.

There’s so much to love about the QSO right now. This orchestra is on fire, figuratively speaking, and with Clerici at the helm there is a sense of renewed excitement. It was palpable in the Concert Hall the other night when Umberto Clerici led them playing a Mahler masterpiece.

Packages for Season 2024 are available now and single tickets will go on sale from November 22.

qso.com.au

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