In Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 7, night becomes both a landscape and a state of mind – a realm where dreams, memories, and illusions blur into reality. With Simon Hewett conducting, the Queensland Youth Orchestra delves into one of Mahler’s most visionary and enigmatic works, a symphony that marks the twilight of romanticism and the dawn of modernity. 

Often called Mahler’s Night Symphony, the Seventh begins in darkness. Its opening movement unfolds like a nocturnal journey – shadowy, restless, and full of foreboding energy. Two Nachtmusik movements (literally, night music) follow, each revealing a different face of the night: one a mysterious forest filled with distant horns and ghostly echoes, the other a tender serenade glowing with moonlight and warmth. Between them lies a fleeting, spectral scherzo – a dance of phantoms, elegant and grotesque in equal measure. 

But as dawn breaks in the finale, Mahler pulls the curtain back on the dream. Bursting into daylight with a riot of brass and energy, he nods to Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg – a work free from gods and myths, grounded instead in real, human life. Here, Mahler awakens from the long romantic dream. The illusions, the archetypes, the grand emotions of the night all dissolve into a radiant, ironic, and utterly human celebration of existence itself.