The inclusion of one of his piano concertos - delicious and wonderful are descriptions that will do for starters – has delighted lovers of the 23 originals that Mozart wrote and made this annual event a peep into the Viennese musical life of two widely separate eras.

So alongside the polkas, waltzes and overtures, plus the Radetsky March from the Strausses & Co, the sound of Mozart entering his operatic and instrumental peak comes with the admired and innovative young German soloist Florian Uhlig returning to the Assembly Hall to play the Concerto No 23 in A major (K488) of early 1786.

As winter deepens around us, and the indoor retreat of the ballroom is where we are bound, the warmth and heightened emotions of summer will also be found here – and of confused amorous goings-on.

This concerto, arguably Mozart's most popular for piano, was born as he was writing the great romantic comedy The Marriage of Figaro for the Vienna opera houses. When a composer has more than one work on the go, ingredients cross-feed and fertilise, and the feel of some of the music may be heard in either work. So it is with Figaro and K488.

But the sound of No 23 is rare among the Mozart concertos. Only two others, the exhilaratingly sonorous and suave No 22 in Eb, and the dark, profound and mysteriously powerful No 24 in C minor (heard last season on this occasion with Ian Fountain), share the inclusion of two clarinets in the orchestra.

In particular, these then just recently-introduced orchestral instruments open up for Mozart an ideal sound vehicle for his lyrical melodies and also busy, sometimes beguiling, sometimes humorous, arpeggio work.

They sensualise and blend like smooth coffee with the sound made by the woodwind, especially in No 22 and No 23 because in these concertos, written only 2½ months apart, Mozart asked his two oboists to play their clarinets instead, to create the particular sound and moods he wanted.

Incredibly, only three weeks later, No 24 was completed and here Mozart so loved the clarinet sound he had created that he now went the whole hog. He brought back his oboes but also called in two separate clarinettists to gain access to both worlds. Then, a month later, the Marriage of Figaro, among the greatest operas of all time, reached its completion.

Florian Uhlig's noted individual interpretation and improvisation will have scope in the concerto No 23 with the right-hand decorations of the tunes and the cadenzas. We await with interest.

Mischief, fun and laughter – but not before some melancholic agonising - are all to be heard in this concerto, just as in the shenanigans of The Marriage Of Figaro.

They remind us that whenever Mozart was composing instrumental music in this new-found era of his life, as a Viennese freelance composer of meteorically rising, then inexplicably plummeting fame, the singing and drama of the operatic stage always sat on his shoulders.

The New Year concert is a long chocolate box of flavours, it draws the biggest crowd of the WSO season, and there's plenty of clapping along.

And to help get the listeners into the music there will be no shortage of interesting and amusing information from popular conductor John Gibbons - not only in his programme notes but his witty introduction to the pieces.

The concert starts at 2.45pm. Ticket info on 01903 206206.

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