Fans of the cello are having a bonanza month in Sydney with three top international virtuosi giving concerts and recitals.

Germany’s Maximilian Hornung, a protégé of Anne-Sophie Mutter, gave a stellar performance of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 with Sydney Symphony earlier this month and English superstar Sheku Kanneh-Mason will be here next month to play Edward Elgar’s concerto in Sydney and to premiere Edmund Finnis’s work in Melbourne.

The meat in the sandwich is 34-year-old French-Belarusian Ivan Karizna, hailed as special by both Gidon Kremer and András Schiff, who brings his own brand of poetic magic and power to Robert Schumann’s Cello Concerto in A minor in this latest SSO concert marking the welcome return of German conductor Anja Bihlmaier.

Ivan Karizna, conductor Anja Bihlmaier and musicians of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Photo © Sydney Symphony Orchestra

A huge stage presence, Karizna’s giant frame belies the subtlest of touches and within the space of a beat he can go from whispered sweet lyricism to immense power with booming bass notes on his 1760 Tassini cello once owned by Paul Tortelier.

Schumann’s orchestral writing is subtle and the energetic and attentive...