Jessica Cottis – Conductor Lorina Gore – Soprano, Artist in Focus Jayson Gillham – Piano Canberra Symphony Orchestra Benjamin De Murashkin Logos Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Piano Concerto No. 21 ‘Elvira Madigan’ Gustav Mahler Symphony No. 4 For many, the night sky produces a humble appreciation of one’s smallness in an impossibly big universe. Gustav Mahler’s fourth symphony explores this sense of awe and reverence, gazing up toward heaven as seen through the eyes of a child. The work ascends gradually to an ethereal height, inspired by the poem Das himmlische Leben (‘The heavenly life’). Benjamin de Murashkin’s LOGOS explores the philosophical concepts of cosmic formation and destruction. A musical take on quantum theory and the Big Bang, the work evokes the exponential expansion of a universe before its dramatic contraction into nothingness. While perhaps no music could capture in its fullness the sublimity of the universe, Mozart’s timeless Piano Concerto No. 21 is a close contender and a powerful expression of the human experience within our vast cosmos.