Last Words brings together three of the most ambitious works in the orchestral and choral repertoire and places them in the hands of the next generation of Australian musicians. Join The University of Queensland Symphony Orchestra (UQSO) in the QPAC Concert Hall, conducted by the Kinnane Professor of Music, Paul Dean, takes on some of the greatest music ever written.

The program opens with the Adagio from Mahler’s unfinished Symphony No. 10, the only movement he completed in full. Vast in scale yet intensely personal, it sits somewhere between a love letter and a farewell, building to a shattering dissonant climax before retreating into stillness.

From there the UQSO turns to Bruckner’s Te Deum, a blazing affirmation of faith that the composer valued so highly he suggested it might serve as the finale to his own unfinished Ninth Symphony. Here the orchestra is joined by the UQ Chorale (directed by Dr Graeme Morton), the UQ Singers (directed by Dr Shaun Brown) and outstanding UQ student soloists, turning private reflection into full-throated exultation.

The program closes with Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 ’Pathétique’, his last completed symphony, finished only months before his death. It traverses restless turbulence only to arrive at one of the quietest, most desolate endings ever conceived.

Join The University of Queensland Symphony Orchestra and Paul Dean to explore Last Words; the final statements of three composers who wrote a world away and more than a century ago, each of them confronting their own mortality late in life, interpreted anew by young musicians at the very start of their own careers.