There are some guest conductors who come in and immediately imbue an orchestra with their own unique personality and sound. Israeli conductor Asher Fisch is one such beast, the Principal Conductor of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra bringing a dark, almost raw, intensity to the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in the first of three performances – all, unusually, at matinee times – of a program titled Scottish Fantasy, before he opens WASO’s Masters Series in Perth next weekend.

Asher Fisch, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Scottish FantasyAsher Fisch. Photo © Sara Hannagan

Don’t let the title fool you, however – with works by Strauss, Bruch and Mendelssohn featured, this program is very much a Germanic take on Scotland. But Fisch is in his element in the German repertoire, the conductor’s recent triumphs including Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde last year and a highly acclaimed Brahms symphony cycle before that. He conducted the SSO two years ago in Richard Strauss’s Eine Alpensinfonie, and it was to Strauss that he returned in this program, opening the concert with the composer’s early tone poem Macbeth.

Strauss’s 1887 orchestral treatment of the Scottish play was his first ‘official’ tone pome, though it wasn’t premiered until...