West Australian Symphony Orchestra’s latest Master Series program closed out the first half of the season with a dense, rich offering in the pairing of Elgar’s Cello Concert and Bruckner’s Third Symphony. Between the melancholy sumptuousness of the former and the Beethoven-Wagnerian lovechild of the latter, WASO Principal Conductor Asher Fisch, and German cellist Daniel Müller-Schott enthusiastically sank their teeth into the late/post-Romantic soundworlds of a concise yet somewhat exhausting program with excellent results.

Daniel Müller-Schott with Asher Fisch and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, 2022. Photo © Rebecca Mansell

Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E Minor is one of those quintessentially tragic works that seems to resonate more with each successive generation of music lovers. Composed in 1919 in the wake of the First World War after a period of ill health, and premiering under-rehearsed that same year to a poor reception, Elgar’s final major orchestral work is commonly described as a “lament for a lost world”. In this lament, Müller-Schott and WASO were in fine form, Müller-Schott elegising and soaring up and down the range of his instrument with a responsive, tight-knit and expressive orchestra to...