This Perth matinee performance came ahead of WASO’s regional tour of the same program, with the addition of WA composer Lachlan Skipworth’s Flute Concerto, to Mandurah and Albany. I love Skipworth’s music. But I didn’t miss it on this occasion, as the tight hour-long program suited the 575-seat theatre. As did WASO Principal Conductor Asher Fisch’s lean, tight accounts of the Act III Intermezzo from Puccini’s Manon Lescaut and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64.

That said, one had the impression Fisch was always trying to break the music out of its intimate confines and into the world beyond, where passion, conflict and triumph reign. This inherent tension – between respecting the theatre’s inherent qualities on the one hand and the music’s on the other – gave this concert a power not always matched in larger venues.

WASO performs Tchaikovsky Fifth Symphony. Photo © Simin Soyer

Puccini’s Intermezzo proved emblematic of that tension, both concentrating and developing as it does the expansive Act II love duet between Manon and Des Grieux. Fisch seized on the chromaticism and instability of the opening, urging the low strings on towards...