Under the assured baton of Associate Conductor Jen Winley, WASO’s Thursday matinee concert program ended up becoming an exercise in contrasts rather than correspondences, the predominantly cheerful Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A major allowing a sell-out audience better to savour Mendelssohn’s more nuanced dark clouds obscuring an otherwise sunny Symphony No. 4, Italian in the same key.

Som Howie’s Mozart was exemplary in its technical command. The WASO Associate Principal Clarinet navigated the instrument’s treacherous registers with the fluid grace that has marked his international career, from Stockholm to Sydney. Yet here was the first paradox: perfection as prison, Mozart’s near-unrelieved luminosity oppressive in its very completeness.

Jen Winley conducts WASO in Mozart & Mendelssohn. Photo © Artshoot Media

Howie’s opening Allegro and closing Rondo rejoiced in their own insouciant virtuosity but the commitment to sustained brilliance left little room for the shadows that might have provided necessary contrast. The Adagio, that sublime aria, achieved moments of genuine poetry, yet even here the interpretation maintained its commitment to light over darkness, beauty over complexity. I yearned for those fleeting moments of vulnerability that might have revealed the mortal composer behind the...