Cover image: Chamber Series – Radiant, May 2025 at the Government House Ballroom. Credit Daniel James Grant

The Perth Concert Hall is a grand venue that has served the West Australian public well over the last fifty-two years. Hopefully it will be even grander and of greater service once it reopens after the  current renovations. In the meantime, the Perth concert scene is somewhat bereft. Undaunted, the WA Symphony Orchestra has taken the opportunity to diversify and refresh its annual program.

Over the past six months WASO has provided Perth’s orchestral audience with a moveable feast. Instead of the one venue, it’s annual program has been presented in an array of rooms across the city each chosen for their suitability to the respective parts of the program. Individually, these rooms have their advantages and challenges but in addressing these the orchestra has trialled some innovative programming ideas.

The first and major task was to find a suitable venue for the mainhouse concerts, the centrepiece of WASO’s annual program. As the orchestra had been based in UWA’s iconic Winthrop Hall for a  six year stretch between the demolition of its original home, the old Capitol Theatre, in 1967 and the opening of the Concert Hall in 1973, there was a certain symmetry in choosing it: history repeating, the return to a former temporary residence.

In spite of a century of undergraduate examinations, Winthrop Hall has the gravitas for classical music—people enjoy dressing up to go there. The acoustics can be difficult but with careful management and two massive drapes hung either side of the stage, the sound is pretty good. But the room does have one major drawback—the seats are on the flat. The further back, the harder it is to see the depth of the stage.

To compensate, the stage’s already significant rake has been increased. As Principal Conductor Asher Fisch pointed out, this allowed them to reconfigure the orchestra in the conventional 19th Century format. The double basses have been moved from their snug corner stage left to the centre of  top tier, immediately below the commanding sweep of organ pipes. This allows the celli and violas to fan out to the edge of the stage. It is a dramatic and different look, further enhanced by the vari-coloured lighting effects that dance across the organ pipes each show.

To commemorate its return to Winthrop Hall, WASO’s opening concert in March featured the world premiere of a specially commissioned work by WA composer James Ledger. Inspired by the complex play of light through the hall’s stain-glass windows, The Light Fantastic is a powerful and provocative work, at times edgy and loud, like cracker night, at others calming and lyrical, like the play of morning sunlight through the great eastern window.

At a pinch, Winthrop seats 1100, significantly fewer than the Concert Hall. Hence, it was no surprise that the three performances of the opening program were sold out. The seven programs since, ranging from Die Fledermaus to Edward Gardiner conducting Brahms, have each only been presented twice and the houses, if not sold out, have been close to capacity.

The second change involves another venue in which WASO has a long history.

When it opened in 1904, His Majesty’s Theatre was the largest in Australia. It was nearly knocked down in the mid-1970s but public outcry saw the State Government buy the building and establish the Perth Theatre Trust (now the Arts and Culture Trust) to run it. In the subsequent refurbishment, the seating was reduced by half and the oft-bemoaned pillars removed to improve the sightlines.

Through its collaboration with the WA Ballet and Opera, WASO has had a strong presence at The Maj. Since the 1990s it has provided the music for the mainhouse productions there. This year the orchestra has also been taken out of the pit and put on the stage, a tricky manoeuvre given the size of the stage and the presence of the fly tower. Despite its grandeur, there is insufficient space for the full seventy-piece orchestra while the hollow fly-tower can suck the sound up into its rafters. The solution:  a special baroque chamber series for smaller ensemble and the installation of baffle boards, on loan from the Albany Entertainment Centre, at the base of the tower.

As a result, May’s Baroque Brilliance, under the direction of Shaun Lee-Chen and featuring Sara MacLiver, was just that, brilliant. A superb show of Rebel, Vivaldi, Pisendel and Handel, it was easy to see and graceful to the ear.

A second baroque concert, Bach to Bach, also under Lee-Chen’s baton, is scheduled for October.

Another historic venue to be drawn into WASO 2025 ambit is Government House Ballroom. If not the most, this is certainly one of the most beautiful rooms in Perth.

Completed in 1899, with its arched arcades, colonnaded balconies, ornate ceiling and glittering chandeliers, the ballroom is a superb example of Colonial architecture—with excellent acoustics. It’s little wonder WASO chose it as the setting for the new Chamber Series. The mood of the room matches the tone of the music, a Sunday afternoon program that explores the various configurations of the chamber music canon.

For the vertically challenged seated up the back, the confluence of the flat floor and low stage is a distinct disadvantage, raked venues rule, but the chamber initiative is a fine addition to WASO’s program. There are three concerts in the series this year, Radiance, Rapture and Serenade.

The next two courses in this sumptuous feast have been served at the State Theatre Centre. Both the Heath Ledger and the Studio Underground have allowed for further program innovations.

The Heath Ledger is home to the Matinee Symphony Series, the evolution of the ever-popular Morning Symphony Series, a daytime variation of the mainhouse program. The proximity of the theatre to the central station is convenient for the elderly audience the series attracts but the smaller capacity of the room has seen each show presented twice (hence matinee, not morning). Typically, both performances are full to capacity.

As with the Maj, the same baffle boards have been hung to stop the music disappearing up the fly-tower. The resulting sound is best ever heard in that auditorium.

The Studio Underground has allowed for the most daring innovations in the program. With only 234 seats, it is by far the smallest room in the itinerary, but this has been turned to advantage by hosting there the most challenging end of the orchestral repertoire, those works that will only ever appeal to the most hard core audience: the very new and the avant garde.

The Composition Project featured the work of four emerging West Australian composers performed by the WASO education chamber ensemble, a microcosm of the main orchestra. Under the mentorship of James Ledger and WASO composer-in-residence Olivia Davies, these outstanding young artists were given the opportunity to work with top professional musicians.

In the same week, Danceworks, Musical Mavericks, delivered a powerful program of European minimalism. The ever-changing ensemble was among the most adventurous ever corralled by WASO and included jazz musicians. More what you would expect from the ACO, the show was a sharp break to the WASO tradition and went down very well with its intimate audience.

The Pandemonium concert in November will follow on from this.

The final piece in this mosaic of venues is one in which WASO regularly performs: the Riverside Theatre at the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre. Seating 2500, WASO need this space for its most popular concerts—the movie nights and hybrid shows with pop/rock musicians. These components of the program have been virtually unchanged this year.

Pitched at a family audience, the sheer scale of these events is fantastic, more like a footy match than your typical symphony. It can be confusing on the film nights knowing which to follow, the movie or the music, but the utter force of a live score is sensational. It is easy to be swept up in the enthusiasm of the audience clapping at each featured turn, waiting for neither the scene on screen nor the piece itself to end.

Taking classical music to the broader community is a crucial duty of a state-funded orchestra. Typically, WASO’s Riverside shows are well attended—the three performances of Jurassic Park  drew more than 5000 people.

By current accounts the renovations to the Perth Concert Hall are ahead of schedule and the venue should be back in action in time for the 2028 Perth Festival. The short answer to the obvious question is that its closure has highlighted just how important a venue it is to the city’s music. But counter to this, WASO’s quest to find replacement venues has led to the commissioning of an important new work and the development of an innovative classical music program, one that has allowed the introduction of a chamber series, a baroque series, a more challenging avant garde program and an enhanced matinee cycle.

The orchestra has used these events to reach an even broader cross section of the Perth musical community. Hopefully, by the time the Concert Hall reopens, the word of mouth from these developments will have spread and these venues will remain a feature of WASO’s annual program.