Would audiences have stayed away in droves had this first WASO Masters Series concert for 2019 been entitled Poulenc Stabat Mater or Ravel Shéhérazade, rather than Mozart Symphony No 40? I doubt it.

Siobhan Stagg. Photo © Simon Pauly 

That’s because together WASO and principal conductor Asher Fisch are now such a drawcard they’re worth hearing in anything. Add WASO Artist in Association for 2019, soprano Siobhan Stagg, and the combined forces of the WASO Chorus and St George’s Cathedral Consort into the mix and it’s a no-brainer. Still, good to hook ‘em with something tasty and familiar, I suppose. Not that Mozart’s Symphony No 40 in G Minor is anything less than one of the great orchestral masterpieces of the classical era.

And what a curtain raiser it makes, especially here, with Fisch and WASO firing on all cylinders right from the get-go. So many performances miss the poignancy of the first movement’s major-key bridge, just before the second subject kicks in. Not here, with Fisch establishing a bitter-sweet dialectic that will serve him well for the entire symphony.

That’s to say, between the ferocity of the first...