It is not immediately apparent to me as to why this second in WASO’s 2025 chamber music series is entitled Rapture. However, I can at least say that for the most part, I am indeed enraptured by the quality and diversity of the music: Brahms’ String Sextet No. 2, Elena Kats-Chernin’s series of String Quartet Miniatures, and Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1.

And of course, for the most part at least, by the playing of some of WASO’s finest musicians, who also curate the program.

I say for the most part, as the wonderful young musicians performing the Brahms – Alexandra Isted and Lucas O’Brien (violins), Alex Brogan and Benjamin Caddy (violas) and Andrew Leask and Nicholas Metcalfe (cellos) – take a curiously cautious approach to this intensely introspective and melancholic work.

Members of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra: Rapture. Photo © Simin Soyer

Thus, while the ensemble acquits itself well enough in the second movement Scherzo and the finale, the first movement’s complex development section lacksthe requisite drama, the third movement Adagio the requisite pathos.

Following the interval, a quartet comprising Rebecca Glorie and Cerys Tooby (violins), Rachael Kirk (viola) and Fotis...