In their latest offering, entitled Intimate Letters, the ACO shook up traditional concert format with the assistance of the Bell Shakespeare Company. Under the direction of London Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Gordan Nikolic and theatre directors Peter Evans and Susanna Dowling, Intimate Letters is a unique music and theatre collaboration.

Actors Ella Scott Lynch and Marshall Napier read excerpts from the letters of Mozart, Smetana and Janáček around the ACO’s performance of the related musical works of the three composers. Unless you’ve spent hours poring over the personal, handwritten and occasionally rambling correspondences of various composers as Susanna Dowling has, then these spoken additions grant new insight into the obsessiveness, darkness and enthusiasm of Janáček, Smetana and Mozart respectively.

As that list above might have suggested, Mozart’s Divertimento in F, the first work on the program, was slightly out of place in the company of the tortured, late masterpieces of the two Czech composers that followed. The Divertimento, one of three composed by the sixteen-year-old Mozart in 1772, is a short, delightful, Italianate piece with three sparkling movements. The ACO’s performance was charming, and immediately affirmed the belief I have that they are one of...