Dreams, visions, obsessions, and alien troubadours. The musical imagination can conjure up the wildest things, and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra explored these impulses with the musical insights of French conductor Fabien Gabel, Perth-based composer James Ledger, and violist (as well as composer, and conductor) Brett Dean.

Florent Schmitt is a composer rarely performed today, and hearing WASO breathe life into his 1915 work Rêves was a rewarding experience. As Schmitt sought to musically realise the quasi-intangible, mysterious experience of dreaming, Gabel masterfully guided WASO through the ebbs and flows of the score. Every swell was expertly fashioned, every entry controlled to maximise intensity, and the halting, stop-start gestures towards the end – reminiscent here of someone gradually awakening from a dream – were integrated seamlessly into the overall flow of the piece. Not unsurprisingly, Schmitt’s orchestration is reminiscent of that of Debussy, and Gabel and WASO brought equal measures of shimmer and warmth to the score. Particularly well-realised were the slightly sinister brass tones and the restless wind figurations that underpinned many of the swells.

James Ledger. Photograph supplied

In continuing the theme of ‘music rarely performed’, it’s not often that concertgoers are...