This near-sellout concert, WASO’s first for its 2024 season, brought together three disparate works which, despite differences in scale and style, beautifully highlighted the relationships between soloists and orchestra.

The didgeridoo is given a prominent place in Australian composer, conductor and violist Aaron Wyatt’s The Coming Dawn, originally written for that instrument as well as string quartet and vibes but here premiering in Wyatt’s orchestral arrangement.

Coming Dawn: Aaron Wyatt conducts the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. Photo © Daniel Grant

With Wyatt conducting, Richard Walley as didgeridoo soloist, and an expanded instrumental palette which included brass and percussion, this version of The Coming Dawn unfolded in near-perfect conditions, the evolving orchestral soundscape sometimes threatening to overwhelm the didgeridoo’s insistent drone but, in the end, submitting to its authority, sky and land aglow with the same ethereal light.

Despite the use of modest orchestral forces, The Coming Dawn was inspired by the expansive WA landscape and its first peoples. Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No.3, which requires much larger forces and a big piano technique, was by contrast inspired by the composer’s personal battles, such as depression.

And indeed, as soon as South Korean...