With violins arranged antiphonally and double-basses to the left of the conductor, Queensland Symphony Orchestra Chief Conductor Umberto Clerici and WASO’s own Principal Oboe Liz Chee served up a delicious four-course musical banquet on Friday night: the kind which, as dietitians tell us, should leave us only 80 percent sated – in other words, wanting more.

The concert opened with Schubert’s Rosamunde Overture (actually written by the composer in 1820 for another stage work, The Magic Harp), Clerici and WASO crisply despatching a work which, with its slow introduction and brighter body, looked forward to Mozart’s Don Giovanni Overture and the first movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 in the second half of the program.

Umberto Clerici and WASO. Photo © Rebecca Mansell

WASO now reduced to strings and a wind octet (flutes, clarinets, bassoons, horns), soloist Liz Chee joined orchestra and conductor for British composer Judith Weir’s 2018 Oboe Concerto, a co-commission from Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and WASO.

With a first movement of serpentine melodic figures and interrupted conversations between soloist, winds and strings and a second movement redolent of a Baroque arioso, replete with...