Heroic performances bring the house down

ROYAL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA ROYAL CONCERT HALL

- By WILLIAM RUFF

AT first sight, this concert had “safe and sellable” written all over it.

For a start it featured conductor Vasily Petrenko, a favourite with Nottingham audiences for many years and now in charge of the Royal Philharmonic.

And then there was the programme: a celebration of Scandinavian music, featuring a famous overture from Denmark, the most popular Norwegian concerto and perhaps the best-loved Finnish symphony. A ticket-selling winner if ever there was one.

However, it was much more than that, just proving that nothing beats live music-making for surprises and for making the old sound new.

Nielsen’s Masquerade overture got proceedings off to a fizzing start.