SCO & Yeol Eum Son, City Halls, Glasgow *****

There are times when the Scottish Chamber Orchestra discards the label on the tin. This was one of them. With Dvorak’s broad-shouldered Symphony No 7, the orchestra necessarily eschewed its chamber persona for a symphonic one. Bigger numbers, bigger sound, yet still with that distinctive crispness and clarity that defines the SCO approach.

They were responding to conductor Andrew Manze, quite superbly, in a work charming in its sweeping lyrical delicacy, yet intense in its forceful, brooding leanings towards Wagner.

Manze struck a golden balance between the two, a performance of gripping magnitude, tempered by keen-eyed intelligence.

Where the opening churned menacingly with rumbles of discomfort, the Czech-flavoured zest of the Scherzo and self-propelling optimism of the finale offered the brighter side of the coin. The strings, in particular, expressed brilliance in attack. The programme opened with the Concerto for String Orchestra by the mid-20th century Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz, whose music has recently enjoyed some justified revival.

Owing much of its muscle and bite to the irascible neoclassicism of Stravinsky, it is nonetheless a work of uncompromising originality. Manze seized on this from the start, demanding beefy assertiveness from the strings.

Between the fiery athleticism of the outer movements, the central Andante presented a hazy, melancholic respite and a density of tone that pulsated with soft, satisfying heat.

Such earthiness seemed miles away from the ensuing unpretentiousness of pianist Yeol Eum Son in Mozart’s last Piano Concerto, No 27.

Her approach was one of alluring understatement and nimble precision, a childlike tenderness in the slow movement, a glimpse of the extrovert in the final Allegro, and a sparkling SCO very much in home territory. Her throwaway encore was the icing on a delicious cake.

Music review: SCO & Yeol Eum Son, City Halls, Glasgow