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While this concert’s marketing was focused on Mozart’s Requiem, it was Haydn in the first half that made the greater impact, in the form of an ecstatically virtuosic performance of his Cello Concerto no. 1 with soloist Alban Gerhardt. Passagework was everywhere immaculately tuned and played with perfect dexterity, Gerhardt’s fingers dancing up and down the instrument with tremendous velocity.

One of the pleasures of attending live concerts is discovering sounds that recordings often mask or fail to highlight. Occasionally, the sheer enormity of the experience can be so stunning that I reel from it for days. The “2013 Season Special Event” of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra on Thursday was one of those occasions.