Throughout the year, the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra has been presenting programs with interesting themes and creating fascinating juxtapositions in its selection of music. This concert was no exception; the emphasis here was on the idea of the waltz as a form of both musical expression and social commentary.

The concert opened with a burst of swirling, vibrant energy, suggesting barely controlled chaos. British composer Anna Clyne’s Masquerade could be used as a soundtrack to a scene from a fast-action fantasy movie in which winged creatures pursue witches and wizards on broomsticks. In fact, Clyne had been asked to write something celebratory for the last night of the 2013 BBC Proms. Clyne indicates that her inspiration was the 18th-century pleasure garden with its masques, acrobats and fireworks, and musically it draws on an old English folk song, Juice of Barley. There is a lot packed into this intense but enlivening five-minute gem, with its gorgeous orchestral colour and movement. Opening with a percussive bang, it is, as the concert’s theme suggests, vivacious, and while Masquerade resembles a fanfare, it sensitises us to the concert’s main fare.