Opening with Liszt’s Les Préludes and proceeding to the same composer’s Piano Concerto No. 1 before ending with Elgar’s Second Symphony, Friday night’s concert with the WA Symphony Orchestra under Principal Conductor Asher Fisch was part celebration, part renunciation of the Romantic tradition.

A celebration, since the very figure of Franz Liszt, let alone his music, conjures up images of the rock star and religious ascetic, part-devil, part-saint, simultaneously revolutionary and reactionary. His music is consequently the epitome of flashy virtuosity and meditative introspection.

Asher Frisch and West Australian Symphony Orchestra. Photo © Daniel Grant

A renunciation, since Liszt’s music often reached beyond the Zeitgeist into what would later be labelled Impressionism. And Elgar’s Symphony No. 2 ends not with a bang but with a whimper, eschewing the expected grand climax in favour of something more ambiguous, less confident, neither resigned nor content, more attuned to the spirit that would come to haunt the period just following the Great War.

Liszt’s Virgil in his symphonic poem Les Préludes is Alphonse de Lamartine, whose Méditations poétiques inspired to composer to depict different stages in life’s journey, typified by thematic...