Maestros as good as they get MUSIC Queensland Symphony Orchestra Johannes Fritzsch, conductor. Anton Kuerti, piano. QPAC Concert Hall, Brisbane, February 16. AS the soon-to-retire Pope was fond of telling us, it is salutary to be reminded of old-world orthodoxies. So it was with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra's opening Maestro concert of the year, brimming with dignity, tradition and authority. These are the values that Johannes Fritzsch, chief conductor since 2007, has brought to Brisbane. Clearly the QSO players adore him and adore playing for him. With 25 new members since my last memory of them seven years ago, they now play with confidence and flair that would match any orchestra in this country. Saturday's concert, before an almost full house, reinforced high romantic values. Bruckner can be heavy going, with his long-windedness and repetitive four-square structures. In his music, teams of devout peasants toil to construct huge cathedrals, while ageing prelates thunder dogma from ornate pulpits. Symphony No 4, the Romantic, with its filmic journey down the Rhine, is the easiest place to start with Bruckner. It has some memorable tunes and the brass players relish their many big moments. Putting the QSO brass on risers was overkill: they could have been heard a block away. But, after 65 minutes, there was a collective sigh of relief that the destination had been reached. Does one feel the same way after Mahler or Strauss? More memorable was Beethoven's Emperor Concerto which preceded it. Here, Fritzsch conjured sounds of gossamer beauty and refinement that could have come from Vienna's hallowed Musikverein. In pianist Anton Kuerti, the 74-year-old legend from Canada, this performance had great authority. It is the mark of musicianship of the highest order to make something so well-known so fresh and startling. At times, Kuerti seemed to want to play with rhythms and passage-work in an improvisatory way, but Fritzsch held tight reins. Overall, this was an Emperor for posterity, refined and resplendent, one that endured the blemishes of QPAC's Steinway, with its overly percussive top octaves. Before the concert, QSO chair Greg Wanchap launched an appeal to assist the Bundaberg Symphony Orchestra, which lost its library and instruments in the recent floods.