At the same event, Classic FM launched an intriguing education partnership with Musicworks.

The Camerata was joined by young musicians from a Swedish academy in Uddevalla, which has a twin-city relationship with North Ayrshire. The composite band was conducted by head of Musicworks Chris Gray in a programme of Britten’s Simple Symphony, Kevan O’Reilly’s new Trumpet Concerto (with academy principal John Wallace as soloist), Maxwell Davies’s jaunty Birthday Card for Prince Charles, and, in an ambitious second half, Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony, the Eighth String Quartet in the overwhelming arrangement for string orchestra by Rudolf Barshai.

The orchestra, especially in the Britten, sounded raw; there are some very young teenagers in the outfit. But what was clear was the meticulous detail in the playing, suggesting rigorous, disciplined coaching and the securing of an impressive level of musicality in phrasing, ensemble, dynamics and integrity.

In a superbly focused performance of the Shostakovich, all of these elements, along with the mood, concentration and intensity of the music, came together. O’Reilly’s concerto, an anti-concerto that didn’t glance sideways at the traditional model, took a different approach and set its soloist, John Wallace in soulful mode, as a solitary figure against a landscape where the strings provided the atmosphere, colour and the pulse behind the soloist’s musings. O’Reilly, recently graduated, is a young man who knows his Miles Davis.

And Classic FM’s response to Musicworks? “We’ve backed a winner,” said managing director Darren Henley at half-time.

North Ayrshire Camerata, RSAMD, Glasgow

Michael Tumelty

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