On a mild summer mid-morning at Lavender Bay, there’s a halcyon calm that not even distant construction noise can penetrate – unless you’re Simone Young. Aurally clocking a pneumatic drill, the conductor in chief of Sydney Symphony Orchestra cocks her head in the direction of the sound and then works both her hands downwards in a shimmering motion as if sculpting the air between them: “I’m seeing that as a long column of ragged stuff.”
Remembering happier sounds, she casts her mind back to a recent Wednesday night on the podium at Sydney Opera House, conducting the Sydney Symphony Orchestra (SSO) and “our beautiful singer”, contralto Noa Beinart, in Mahler’s Third Symphony. “When she opens her mouth the sound is like a river of silk,” Young says, and you can almost see her toes curl with pleasure at the memory.
