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Dates & Key Information

Friday 13 June 2025
7.30pm at Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Ticket price: $9
Our low ticket price is thanks to the support of an anonymous donor.

Duration: approx. 1 hour and 50 minutes including interval

Relaxed Performance

Relaxed performances are designed to be a safe space for audiences of all ages with sensory sensitivity or disability, as well as a welcoming environment for first-time concertgoers to experience the MSO.

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Meet the Music Series

Limited tickets available!

The MSO’s popular Meet the Music Series for Schools is an exciting array of incredible performers and much-loved orchestral repertoire. With six concerts to choose from there is something to inspire everyone, including a new relaxed performance designed to be a comfortable place for first-time concert goers as well as audience members with autism, a disability or sensory sensitivity.

Each concert in this series will be accompanied by a digital pre-concert talk with James Le Fevre, Head of Music at the Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School (VCASS), to help prepare students for the performance.

Program

Barber Adagio for Strings
Korngold Violin Concerto
Shostakovich Symphony No.5

Symphonic powerhouses

The twentieth century produced some of the most passionate and dramatic music ever written. MSO Principal Conductor Benjamin Northey joins forces with Australian violin wunderkind Christian Li to deliver this riveting program of symphonic powerhouses.

  • Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, the composer’s best-known work, is perhaps the ultimate tearjerker. With its sensitively drawn melodies and hauntingly ethereal sound, the Adagio is the epitome of sorrow, tenderness and comfort.
  • In 1945, Austrian-born composer Erich Korngold was the most celebrated Hollywood film composer alive. But having grown up composing in the concert halls of Europe, he yearned to return to his roots. Korngold’s resulting Violin Concerto won instant acclaim for its lush harmonies and memorable melodies drawn from his movie scores written in the 1930s.
  • Shostakovich composed his scintillating Fifth Symphony as a musical apology to Stalin after being denounced by the dictator. While Shostakovich scored top marks for seemingly embracing Soviet ideals, Symphony No.5 is, in fact, an enigmatic work laden with irony, musical code and resistance. It remains one of the composer’s most popular works due to its power and depth.

Duration: approx. 1 hour and 50 minutes including interval

Featuring

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Benjamin Northey conductor
Christian Li* violin

*MSO Young Artist in Association

MSO's relaxed performances are supported by the Australian Government Department of Social Services.

Learning Resources

Things to consider during a concert or rehearsal

(pdf)

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What does an audience member do?

(pdf)

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