There are times when all you can do is marvel. The recital by German cellist Daniel Müller-Schott and Russian-Australian pianist Konstantin Shamray is one of those times.

Both musicians are sought-after on the international music scene, both having earned early success at international competitions: Müller-Schott won the International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians in 1992, and Shamray was the jury and popular prize-winner at the Sydney International Piano Competition in 2008.

These two phenomenal musicians combine to perform three giants of the repertoire – a cello suite by Bach, and sonatas by Shostakovich and Brahms – in a huge night at Melbourne’s Elisabeth Murdoch Hall.

In a remarkable coincidence, Müller-Schott tells the audience, Bach wrote the cello suites in the same year that Venetian luthier Matteo Goffriller crafted the cello used in this performance.

Daniel Müller-Schott. Portrait supplied

Bach’s C major suite for solo cello opens with a dazzling scale that landed, exuberantly, on the cello’s lowest note, creating a launch-pad for (by Baroque standards) a high-octane introduction to the suite. Müller-Schott’s interpretation is exciting; he highlights the musical dialogue embedded in the...