Lovers of Robert Schumann’s Lieder – and I count myself among those happy multitudes – will find song in everything he wrote. Judging by this intimate, lyrical performance, Belarusian-French cellist Ivan Karizna, conductor Otto Tausk and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra certainly seem to have done so in the composer’s Cello Concerto in A minor, Op. 129.

The song-seed has however already been planted when, following attacca the Overture from Haydn’s Die Schöpfung (The Creation), Sibelius’ The Swan of Tuonela finds Jonathan Ryan’s cor anglais soaring magnificently over WASO’s transparent strings. A standout performance which earns Ryan much enthusiastic applause.

Equally miraculous however is the way Tausk and WASO, with superb dynamic, textural and rhythmic finesse, makes the Sibelius seem to emerge quite naturally out of the Haydn. Creation, indeed.

Jonathan Ryan and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. Photo © Daniel James Grant

Equipped with a 1760 Tassini cello formerly owned by Paul Tortelier, Karizna – making his WASO debut – then joins WASO for the Schumann. That conductor and orchestra have already demonstrated such clarity, such precise yet flexible rhythmic control, such transparency of sound in the preceding works is undeniable.

What Karizna brings to the mix is the sense of songster and storyteller combined, the ensuing conversation more reminiscent of Schumann’s Dichterliebe, as between baritone and an exquisite piano accompaniment, than of a heroic concerto.

Ivan Karizna, conductor Otto Tausk and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. Photo © Daniel James Grant

Karizna approaches the first of the three connected movements – yes, another reason the fusing of the Haydn and the Sibelius is a genius move – with a warm, romantic yet unsentimental tone and phrasing which creates space for the music to measure its breath against the harmony. The orchestral playing is just as considered, the woodwinds especially well-balanced.

And while the sublime duetting of Karizna and principal cello Rod McGrath in the evanescent Langsam punches far above its weight in rhetorical equipoise and lusciousness, Karizna’s cadenza in the final Sehr lebhaft feels almost transgressive in its beautifully judged solipsistic confidence – a heftier dose of which Karizna gives us in a startlingly visceral, virtuosic encore, Giovanni Sollima’s Lamentatio from 1998. Here, Karizna actually does often chant and wail alongside his cello, both voices sailing bravely into the turbulent seas of improvisatory lugubriousness and Sicilian rusticity.

Which leaves landfall in the more familiar form of Brahms’ Third Symphony. The opening three chords land with appropriate decisiveness; Tausk unveils the ensuing argument with a sure sense of feeling the parts against the whole while moving by discrete chapters rather than paragraphs.

Ivan Karizna and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. Photo © Daniel James Grant

WASO responds in kind – the strings cohesive and purposeful, David Evans’ horn solo in the lyrical third movement beautifully evoking both Karizna’s and Ryan’s prior contributions. The Poco allegretto is succinctly proposed, measured, autumnal, the cellos finding their opening theme with quiet authority before Tausk allows it to unfurl unforced.

This is a cultivated Brahms which derives its interpretative power from an almost sacred geometry.

For more information on the West Australian Symphony Orchestra in 2026, visit waso.com.au