Two years ago, at its last Melbourne appearance, the Australian World Orchestra (AWO) performed Gustav Mahler’s last completed symphony, the Ninth. Ninety minutes long, that one work was the programme. For its return last Wednesday night, the AWO upped the ante. It presented well over two hours of music, and two Mahler symphonies, at its one-night Mahlerfest, with the strapline ‘Audacious. Exhilarating. Limitless.’ By mounting both Mahler’s Fourth and Fifth symphonies the AWO achieved a feat never before seen in the southern hemisphere. As its conductor and, we could also say, its promoter Alexander Briger commented in the lavish, outsized souvenir booklet: ‘It is, we admit, a huge programme! However, the AWO believes in serving 12-course smorgasbords!’ This was another claimed ‘first’ for an occasionally convened orchestra of Australian musicians, some drawn from our own orchestras but more from beyond: ever-roaming virtuoso travellers, or holders of major positions in orchestras from Israel to Denmark and Chicago to Auckland.