With the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth being celebrated around the world in 2020, you can pretty well expect the composer to be prominently featured in most orchestral seasons next year – and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra is no exception.

Following the stunning concert version of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde that WASO’s Chief Conductor Asher Fisch led in 2018, and his comment to Limelight that he would love to see an opera in concert as an annual event, it’s exciting, but maybe not a great surprise, to see the orchestra staging Beethoven’s only opera Fidelio in concert next year, conducted by the Israeli maestro.

Asher Fisch. Photograph © Nik Babic

Asked how he decided what WASO would do for the Beethoven 250, Fisch says: “Well, of course, with my background, the biggest idea I had is to do the Fidelio in concert. That was number one for me. And Missa Solemnis, which we’ve not done in many, many years, that was number two. And then the question was what do we do in the concert repertoire and...