It’s a paradox. There’s nothing like historically informed performance practice to make the old warhorses of the concert repertoire gambol like newborn foals again.

That’s certainly the sensation one gets listening to Italian conductor Riccardo Minasi – here making his WASO debut – as he applies a musicological blowtorch to three favourite works of the Classical period.

Riccardo Minasi conducts the West Australian Symphony Orchestra in Beethoven’s Eroica. Photo © Artshoot Media

Minasi is a child of the exciting, flamboyant Italian period-instrument scene, a co-founder of Il Pomo d’Oro, former concertmaster of Il Giardino Armonico and currently Principal Guest Conductor of Ensemble Resonanz at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie.

His interpretative style is characterised by a rhetorical intensity that is both analytical and thrilling, the ebb and flow of tension achieved through chiaroscuro extremes of tempo, dynamics and orchestral colour.

Minasi opens by leading an orchestra laid out with antiphonal violins (as it is for the rest of the program) through excerpts from Mendelsohn’s incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The Overture shines and thrums with precision and clarity, the opening woodwind chords lapidary...