In a program note on her 2016 work The Saqqara Bird, Australian composer Melody Eötvös writes that she was inspired by theories about the bird-shaped sycamore-wood artefact excavated at Saqqara in 1898 to create a tapestry of “the mechanical, the living and the ancient becoming new again.” The result is, apparently, atypical for her: a work grounded in rhythmic and harmonic stability, with generative repetition producing a “Pinocchio-like metamorphosis.”

It makes a compelling overture, The Saqqara Bird metaphorically taking flight as German conductor Anja Bihlmaier – making her WASO debut – and the orchestra catch the score’s mechanistic and organic qualities with precision and warmth.

The stage is set for American violinist Benjamin Beilman – no stranger to WASO audiences – to join Bihlmaier and the orchestra for a fine account of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor. Across its three linked movements, Beilman uses a generous expressive palette with discernment. This is, after all, Mendelssohn: less combat than conversation, a quality shared with Schumann’s Cello Concerto, heard from soloist Ivan Karizna and WASO the week before.