Longstanding and popular, the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra’s Elder Hall daytime concerts have tended to feature smaller groups of musicians, often playing chamber works and, more importantly, introducing local audiences to works which are less popular or known.

By contrast, the latest in the series, Carefree, has gathered perhaps the biggest orchestral force in the hall this side of the award-winning Gilham/Carter Beethoven cycle. This hour-long concert featured the orchestra’s principal clarinettist Dean Newcomb in the 20th century’s best loved concerto for the instrument by Aaron Copland. This was paired with an overlooked early symphony by Franz Schubert.

With its warm and reverberant acoustics, Elder Hall is an entirely sympathetic venue for both works.

Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in Elder Hall. Photo supplied

Copland’s concerto (written in the immediate post-WWII years) is a seamless fabric of American lyricism, Latin rhythms and jazz, written for the great Benny Goodman.

Newcomb proves an ideal exponent of the piece, setting the flow of the performance from the opening bittersweet nocturne through to its playful and ingenious conclusion. From the outset, he and the strings were as one, seemingly almost of one breath.

Conductor Luke Dollman led with clarity and...