Let’s be honest, you know that you’re going to get a damn good performance whenever Simone Young is involved. Her conducting is emotive and detailed, and ideally suited for this evening’s music – modern and sharp in the first half, and full of subtle structural detail in the second half.

Simone YoungSimone Young. Photo © Monika Rittershaus 

There was a viola focus in at least part of this concert with Bartók’s Viola Concerto, as well as composer and former Berlin Philharmonic violist Brett Dean’s new Notturno Inquieto. Dean’s Notturno Inquieto is a new work, only premiered by the Berlin Philharmonic this time last year. Part of their series of short ‘tapas’ pieces, or pieces with a duration of approximately six minutes, this was designed as a farewell to the Berlin Phil’s conductor Sir Simon Rattle. The piece opens with a series of spikey fragments from the violas, developing into a back-and-forth with various sections of the orchestra (including subterranean rumbles from a piano). Sustained percussive chimes kept the atmosphere ethereal and suitably nocturnal, before shifting into a wind-and-brass attack over scurrying strings. My regular concert co-conspirator (not into classical much, as a rule)...