Increasingly, Queensland Symphony Orchestra’s management puts the spotlight on its players. Associate concertmaster Alan Smith introduced the guest concertmaster, Natsuko Yoshimoto, from the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Jill Atkinson, harpist, spoke about Marie-Pierre Langlamet, Berlin Philharmonic’s principal harpist and soloist for Ginastera’s Harp Concerto. Phoebe Russell, Principal Double Bass, wrote the program’s welcome note. Celebrating the instrumentalists as well as the conductor and soloist is a good move. In valuing individual players there is a noticeably deeper engagement in the Maestro Series concerts.

Diego Matheuz. Photo © Lucas Dawson Photography

Supposedly, someone quipped that the definition of an intellectual is a person who doesn’t automatically associate the galloping impetus of the last movement of Rossini’s William Tell Overture with the Lone Ranger, America’s iconic hero from a TV series of the same name. Conductor Diego Matheuz is to be congratulated on the direction he gave the orchestra for this Overture because the infamous last movement, seared into our culture’s collective brain, had immense precision. Despite the delivery’s breathless pacing, there was subtlety enough to avoid the clichéd imagery of thundering hooves. Matheuz led a tight yet dignified orchestra, the performance well served...