From Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite and William Barton’s Apii Thatini Mu Murtu to Fauré’s Requiem and Cantique de Jean Racine, this Friday night WASO concert was an invitation to restfulness – and wakefulness.

Didgeridoo virtuoso and Kalkadoon (Mt Isa) man William Barton’s Apii Thatini Mu Murtu (“To sing and carry a coolamon on country together”) was commissioned by QSO and premiered by that orchestra with tonight’s conductor, Benjamin Northey, in 2021.

Magic Spirit: William Barton and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. Photo © Rebecca Mansell

It is both intimate and epic, a lullaby and a singing to life of community and country, richly orchestrated and with the didgeridoo and voice used both descriptively, onomatopoeically and as a vital source of colour and timbre that shimmers across the rest of the score.

Barton writes in his original program note of being, as he first sat at the piano to compose the work, “in Kalkadoon country flying above the landscape like an eagle”. This epic vision of a reconnection to country is at the heart of the work. But in contrast with the equal centrality of  community, of singing together, are the...