Performer: Jacqueline Porter

Mahler and Schubert: masters of both song and symphony. Jacqueline Porter is the soloist as the SSO under Umberto Clerici perform Schubert arrangements and Mahler's classical Fourth Symphony.

Some nice singing and Baroque playing don't quite make up for an over-ambitious, drab staging of a Handel oratorio in Australia's capital.

The latest Sydney Symphony Orchestra concert, entitled Legends by the Sea, was an intriguing mix of contrasting works by Sibelius, Fauré and Debussy.Sibelius’ Lemminkäinen suite was an entirely new discovery for me. If Ashkenazy himself describes it as containing “some of Sibelius’ best music”, it is definitely a discovery worth making.