Guiseppe Rocca violin in hand, Australian Brandenburg Orchestra Concertmaster Shaun Lee-Chen here led a pared-back WASO band through a program that lived up to its title, showcasing as it did diverse facets of the late Baroque era: instability, religiosity, virtuosity, solemnity and grandiosity.

With its jarring opening tone cluster including all the notes of the D minor harmonic scale, Le Chaos, the first movement of Jean-Féry Rebel’s ballet suite Les Élémens, certainly made one sit up and pay attention.

Order restored with a final D major cadence, the stage was set for soprano Sara Macliver to follow a similar trajectory, the “furore” (wrath) of the opening aria of Vivaldi’s motet In furore iustissimae irae providing a spiritual echo to Rebel’s musical turmoil before moving through pleading to lyrical hope and finally joyful resolution with a florid Alleluia.

Baroque Brilliance: Sarah Macliver and members of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. Photo © Rebecca Mansell

As Yvonne Frindle reminded us in her excellent program note, the musicologist Denis Arnold had called Vivaldi’s motet a “concerto for voice” and thus the stage was set again, this time for Lee-Chen to occupy its centre for a...