There is a tension that lives inside every symphony orchestra, and the Queensland Symphony Orchestra is no exception to it. It is the tension between custodianship and conversion — between the obligation to perform the works of the canon with integrity and depth, and the civic imperative to ensure that the concert hall does not become a closed institution, a room speaking only to those already fluent in its language. For an orchestra that exists, in part, through public subsidy and as a state cultural institution, this tension is not merely an artistic question. It is a question of democratic legitimacy.

As one of the largest performing arts companies in Queensland and the state’s only professional symphony orchestra, the QSO plays a vital role in Queensland’s cultural community: educating, mentoring aspiring performers, touring regional centres, broadcasting, and performing with state, national, and international ballet and opera companies. That breadth of civic function places programming decisions under a particular kind of pressure. When the orchestra decides what to place on its stands — which symphonies to conduct, which collaborations to pursue, which audiences to invite — it is making implicit arguments about who Queensland’s cultural life belongs to and who it is for.

These are arguments worth making carefully, and publicly, because the conversation around orchestral programming is rarely as simple as it appears. On one side sit those who believe that dilution of the classical canon in pursuit of broader appeal is a form of artistic compromise — that the orchestra’s singular value lies precisely in its commitment to a repertoire that popular culture cannot supply. On the other sit those who argue that an orchestra which fails to renew its audience is not merely a commercial failure but a civic one. Neither position is wrong, and the QSO’s programming across recent seasons suggests that its leadership understands the question is not binary.

THE WEIGHT OF THE CANON.

The QSO’s programming has always carried the gravitational pull of the European symphonic tradition. When the 45-member Queensland Symphony Orchestra took to the stage for the first time on 26 March 1947, performing for 2,500 music enthusiasts at Brisbane City Hall, the concert featured works by Wagner, Grieg, Berlioz, and Tchaikovsky. That inaugural program was not, in itself, remarkable — it was the program any well-formed mid-twentieth century orchestra would have offered. But it established a lineage, a set of expectations, and an implicit compact with the audience: this orchestra would be the custodian of the Western symphonic inheritance in Queensland’s civic life.

Over the decades that followed, the QSO built its identity on that inheritance. During the first part of its history, the QSO’s longest-serving chief conductor was Rudolf Pekárek, who held the position from 1954 to 1967. Through successive conductors and through Queensland’s own rapid urbanisation and cultural growth, the orchestra maintained a programming philosophy grounded in canonical works — the symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, and Shostakovich; the concerti and overtures that form the architecture of the symphonic repertoire. This is not merely conservatism for its own sake. The canonical works are canonical because they sustain repeated encounter. They do not exhaust themselves. A symphony that was played in Brisbane in 1960 can be played in Brisbane in 2025 and reveal something new — not because the music has changed, but because the orchestra, the conductor, and the audience have.

State-based symphony orchestras, originally managed under the Australian Broadcasting Corporation but now operating as separate independent bodies, have played a major role in performing mainstream orchestral repertoire for the general public as well as commissioning new works from Australian composers and ensuring that works by contemporary international composers are introduced to their audiences. The QSO inherited this dual mandate from the ABC era — to sustain the tradition while remaining a living, forward-looking institution. The challenge is that the two obligations do not always pull in the same direction.

THE STRUCTURAL DILEMMA OF THE MODERN ORCHESTRA.

The QSO’s programming pressures are not unique to Queensland, but they have a particular character here. Australia divested its orchestras from the national broadcaster precisely as orchestral music was losing its cultural centrality — as classical music radio listenership declined, popular culture expanded its reach, audience demographics aged, and questions about cultural relevance grew more insistent. In other words, orchestras gained independence just as they needed to justify their existence in new ways. They were thrust into a market-oriented environment at the very moment when their market position was most vulnerable.

This creates a structural dilemma that no single season’s programming can resolve. While a manufacturer can produce more widgets per hour through technological innovation, an orchestra still requires the same number of musicians to perform a Beethoven symphony as it did a century ago. This creates an inherent and growing gap between costs and earned revenue, necessitating external subsidy. That subsidy, whether from government or private sources, carries expectations — not always articulated, but present. Funders increasingly want to see evidence of reach, of new audiences cultivated, of communities served beyond the existing subscriber base. Programming becomes, in this environment, a form of accountability.

In response, orchestras developed what might be called an “excellence shield”, a defensive posture that positioned artistic quality as non-negotiable and used it to justify continued subsidy. This approach had merit; excellence is indeed core to orchestral identity and value. But it sometimes functioned as a barrier to deeper conversations about relevance. The QSO, like its peer orchestras around the country, has had to navigate this terrain — understanding that claims to excellence and claims to civic relevance are not the same claim, even when they overlap.

Classical music has suffered from a historical association with the cultured and affluent, and in so doing, it has become less appealing to new, younger, and less well-off audiences. Conventional orchestral performances and opera productions have struggled to resonate with such audiences who are accustomed to more interactive and immersive musical experiences. Whether or not one accepts that framing entirely — and there are good reasons to interrogate the premises — it describes a real condition that Queensland’s orchestra cannot simply will away through artistic conviction alone.

THE QSO'S RESPONSE: A THEMATIC AND CROSS-ARTS APPROACH.

The programming strategy that has emerged under the QSO’s current leadership represents a considered, if still contested, response to these pressures. Under Chief Conductor Umberto Clerici, who was appointed in May 2022 and whose contract took effect from 1 January 2023, the orchestra has pursued a model of thematic coherence across each season — not merely assembling a list of attractive programs but building a conceptual arc that gives subscribers and new audiences alike a reason to follow the season as a whole.

In terms of musical evolution, Clerici has centred successive programs on distinct historical and expressive periods: one year focused on the classical era, the following year on the Romantics, with subsequent seasons to concentrate more on the twentieth century onwards. This is a deliberately educational structure, one that treats the audience as capable of following a sustained argument across time rather than requiring each concert to stand entirely alone as an entertainment event.

The 2025 season unveiled a genre-crossing program that spans Shakespeare, circus, cinema, spirituality, and stunning symphonies. The thematic anchor was spirituality and the world beyond — a frame broad enough to encompass mass settings, Romantic tone poems, and contemporary Australian works, but specific enough to give each concert a sense of belonging to a larger conversation. The program was elevated through collaborations with the world-renowned performance company Circa, influential thespian John Bell, contemporary Australian composer Nigel Westlake and singer Lior, and Westminster Abbey organist James O’Donnell.

"I am constantly looking to mix different art forms because we live in a time that is more visual than aural. Acrobats, dancers, actors, filmmakers and light designers are welcome to collaborate and expand our horizons. The music must be enhanced but not disturbed and audiences should feel immersed and moved but not distracted so I try to do projects with integrity and intellectual depth in mind."

That statement, attributed publicly to Maestro Clerici in the 2025 season materials, captures the philosophy at work. The word that carries the most weight is “integrity.” The cross-disciplinary collaborations are not conceived as a dilution of the orchestral experience but as an amplification of it — a way of making the music more vivid, more accessible in perception, without compromising the rigour of the musical performance itself.

The 2025 season began with the Opening Gala featuring gravity-defying performance artists from Circa alongside the orchestra’s artist-in-residence, violinist Kristian Winther, before traversing musical stylings from Giuseppe Verdi and Johann Strauss II to Hans Zimmer and John Williams. The span of that repertoire — from the nineteenth-century waltz tradition to the contemporary film score — is neither accidental nor a concession to populism. It reflects a genuine programming philosophy: that the symphony orchestra is an instrument capable of performing any music written for large forces with sustained tonal richness, and that the audience’s initial point of entry need not determine the ceiling of their eventual engagement.

THE FILM SCORE QUESTION.

No aspect of the QSO’s programming generates more internal debate — within the institution, among critics, and among audiences — than the place of film and video game scores. In addition to classical works, the QSO brings to life popular film scores including Art of the Score: The Music of Hans Zimmer, and usually incredible live-orchestra film screenings featuring James Bond: Skyfall, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, and Home Alone. The 2026 season, as previewed through QPAC programming, includes a video game soundtrack concert drawing from titles including Assassin’s Creed and Sonic the Hedgehog — music drawn from some of the most unforgettable video game soundtracks, performed in symphonic force.

The critical question is not whether these works are “worthy” — that framing is, ultimately, a distraction. The question is what function they serve within a season conceived as a whole. Contemporary orchestras and classical ensembles have sought to diversify their programming by incorporating popular film scores, video game music, and cross-genre collaborations to appeal to wider audience demographics. The risk, if these concerts are conceived purely as entry points with no pathway deeper into the repertoire, is that they become a permanent annexe rather than a genuine gateway — a way of appearing inclusive without actually expanding the civic conversation around classical music.

The QSO’s approach, judged from its recent seasons, seems to understand this risk. The film score concerts coexist with programming of considerable weight — Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, Verdi’s Requiem, Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony. Highlights of the 2025 season included The Rite of Spring with Circa, Shakespeare’s The Tempest with John Bell, The Strauss Gala, The Music of Hans Zimmer, Lior and Westlake, and Verdi’s Requiem. The juxtaposition is deliberate: the orchestra does not hide the canonical works behind the accessible ones. It places them in dialogue, asking audiences to move between registers of experience rather than being permanently assigned to one.

THEMATIC COHERENCE AND THE LONG GAME.

What the QSO’s current programming model represents, at its most ambitious, is an argument that the orchestra can be both rigorous and capacious — that it need not choose between the seriousness of Beethoven’s Ninth and the accessibility of a Hans Zimmer suite, because the same instrument, the same musicians, the same hall, can hold both without either degrading the other. As Maestro Clerici has stated publicly: “I am constantly looking to mix different art forms because we live in a time that is more visual than aural. Acrobats, dancers, actors, filmmakers and light designers are welcome to collaborate and expand our horizons. The music must be enhanced but not disturbed.”

The 2026 season, as emerging from QPAC’s advance programming, continues this direction. From the timeless beauty of Beethoven and Mahler to the thrilling edge of contemporary Australian voices, QSO is to celebrate composers who dared to innovate with works that both challenge and move, alongside exciting new music that speaks to the world of today, a showcase of video game soundtracks, repertoire curated by audiences, world-leading soloists and conductors, and gala performances. The phrase “repertoire curated by audiences” is notable. It represents a shift in the model of programming authority — an acknowledgement that the audience is not merely a recipient of the institution’s curatorial wisdom but a participant in shaping it.

This is not, it should be said, an unambiguously progressive development. There are legitimate concerns that programming determined by audience preference will tend toward the already-known, the already-loved, the already-comfortable. The history of symphony orchestras is, in part, a history of conductors and artistic directors who pushed against popular taste to introduce audiences to works they did not yet know they needed. That capacity for artistic leadership — the ability to say, in effect, “trust us, this will matter to you” — is not well served by a purely market-responsive programming model.

Despite the differences between individual orchestras, what is clear is that audience preferences and priorities have profoundly changed. As a result, the orchestra field will need to think differently: meeting audiences where they are today — with new approaches to presentation, programming, marketing, and customer experience — will be critical. The QSO’s model attempts to do both: to meet audiences where they are while also insisting on where the music can take them.

THE CIVIC FUNCTION OF THE SYMPHONY SEASON.

There is a dimension of the QSO’s programming question that is often underweighted in purely artistic or commercial framings: the civic dimension. The Queensland Symphony Orchestra is not simply a performing arts organisation. It is an institution through which Queensland society comes to understand something about itself — its cultural inheritances, its creative ambitions, its relationship to the wider world of human expression. Programming decisions are, in this sense, civic decisions. To place Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring at the opening of a season — a work that caused a riot at its 1913 Paris premiere, that scandalised European audiences, that overturned received ideas of what rhythm, harmony, and structure could be — is to make a claim about what Queensland audiences in 2025 are capable of receiving and experiencing.

As an arts leader and great Australian orchestra, the QSO is renowned for its high quality, breathtaking performances of both classical and modern compositions that engage audiences of diverse musical tastes, interests, and ages. That formulation — “diverse musical tastes, interests, and ages” — is more than marketing language. It describes an aspiration to universality, to the kind of civic breadth that a state institution has an obligation to pursue. Not every concert will be for everyone. But across a season, across a year, across the decades of the institution’s life, the accumulated programming choices should add up to an invitation that is genuinely open.

The QSO’s own articulation of its mission — “QSO is an orchestra for all Queenslanders, and we take seriously our responsibility to reach audiences across the state: to play, to teach, to tell stories and to bring hope and optimism to communities” — makes the civic claim explicit. The pressure to broaden audiences is not, in this framing, a commercial pressure or a funder’s demand. It is an expression of the institution’s foundational purpose.

The question that remains — and it is a question without a clean answer — is whether the programming strategies currently in place are sufficient to that purpose. Cross-disciplinary collaborations and film score concerts bring new audiences into the concert hall. But do those audiences return for Bruckner? For Messiaen? For the young Australian composer whose new work receives its Queensland premiere on the same program as a Dvorak symphony? The answer, in the long run, may depend less on programming strategy than on the quality of the experience itself — whether the orchestra, on the night, communicates something that makes the audience feel that what happened in that hall was irreplaceable, that no streaming service and no algorithm could have given them what they received.

THE PERMANENT ADDRESS OF A LIVING INSTITUTION.

The QSO’s programming challenge is, at its core, a question of identity across time. How does an institution that carries seventy-eight years of accumulated musical life remain both faithful to that inheritance and genuinely open to the society it serves? The answer is not found in any single season’s program notes, but in the sustained commitment — visible over decades — to hold both the tradition and the expansion together, to refuse the false choice between seriousness and accessibility.

As Queensland moves toward the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the state’s cultural institutions will face heightened scrutiny and heightened opportunity. The QSO will be one of the primary instruments through which Queensland presents its cultural identity to the world and to itself. The programming decisions made in the years approaching 2032 will carry an added weight: they will be part of the argument Queensland makes about what kind of place it is, what it values, and who belongs in its cultural life.

In this context, the question of civic permanence matters. Institutions that wish to be genuinely legible — to their community, to history, to the civic infrastructure of the future — require stable, verifiable identity. The onchain namespace qso.queensland represents exactly this kind of permanent civic address: a place in the digital landscape where the Queensland Symphony Orchestra’s institutional identity is anchored not to a commercial platform or a renewable registration, but to Queensland itself as a persistent identifier. It is the kind of infrastructure that befits an institution whose purpose is, by definition, long-term.

The tension between classical tradition and broader audience reach is not a problem to be solved so much as a condition to be sustained. The best symphony orchestras in the world are those that have learned to live productively within that tension — that understand the canon not as a fortress but as a foundation, and that understand new audiences not as a threat to the institution’s identity but as the condition of its continued meaning. The QSO, across its history and in its present programming, has shown that it understands this. The work of keeping that understanding alive — in every season, in every program, in every collaboration chosen or declined — is the permanent work of an institution that takes seriously what it means to be Queensland’s orchestra.

That permanence, and the trust it represents, is what qso.queensland is designed to hold: not a record of what the orchestra has done, but a durable mark of what it is — a civic institution in continuous service to the cultural life of a state, accountable to its past and genuinely open to the audiences still to come.