Prom 9: BBC Scottish SO/Wigglesworth review – meticulous making of unexpected connections

Royal Albert Hall, London
Beautiful wind playing in a slow-burning Brahms joined searing strings in Schoenberg and Alice Coote’s fine-grain singing of Mahler for a space-testing night

Outside the Proms, British orchestras from beyond the M25 get far too few opportunities to showcase their achievements in the capital’s concert halls. It’s not surprising, then, that those bands often have points to prove when they do make their annual visits to the Albert Hall, and the three that have appeared there during the first week of this summer’s Proms have all shown what London is missing the other 10 months of the year.

After the fine concerts from the Hallé and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the third to acquit itself so well was the BBC Scottish Symphony, under its chief conductor Ryan Wigglesworth. The range and originality of the concerts that Wigglesworth has come up with during his first two seasons in Glasgow have quite often put the BBCSSO’s London sibling to shame, and while this programme of Brahms, Schoenberg and Mahler was very much a mainstream affair, the way in which it was put together and the musical connections it suggested were never commonplace.