By Kayleigh Radford.

The first Monday Night in September the Dundee Music building on the corner of Bell Street is come upon by a group of musicians eagerly anticipating what the new term will bring. We get in and are handed music which when opened for the first time looks like nothing more than black smudges on paper.

We then begin to pick apart the ‘smudge’ and attempt to make it sound like music. Over the next 2–3 months every Monday we pick another piece of the music apart and more and more of the notes fall into place, and eventually we may even play through a movement successfully.

Then we get into November and the nerves kick in as the harsh reality than on Saturday 22nd we will take to the Caird Hall to perform the outcome of the months of hard work.

People often ask what do they like more the performance or the practice, for me it is both as the rehearsals, yes, are a slog but you can see and hear the improvement over the weeks and see that slowly we begin to do it justice. But the performances are special too because you get to share with everyone what you have been doing, every concert without fail the music will find a new level and will be played like we have never played it before.

This November we will be bringing you Mozart Symphony Number 41 (Jupiter) and Mahler Symphony Number 5.

Mozart wrote his last three symphonies during a six-week period in the summer of 1788, days after the death of his infant daughter. ‘Jupiter’, his final symphony, and regarded by many as his finest, was described by Sir George Grove (the first director of the Royal College of Music) as ‘the greatest orchestral work of the world which preceded the French Revolution…Nowhere has he achieved more.’ Herbert von Karajan once said that when you hear Mahler’s Fifth, ‘you forget that time has passed. A great performance of the Fifth is a transforming experience. The fantastic finale almost forces you to hold your breath.’ From the magnificent trumpet opening, to the Adagietto for harp and strings (a love song to his new wife Alma, later used to magnificent effect by Visconti in the film Death in Venice) the musical canvas and emotional scope of this symphony are huge.