Performer: Nathan Braude

The players gathered at the bar for a Scotch as the credits rolled. After three hours and twenty minutes of note-taking, I decided to follow suit.

François-Xavier Roth conducts sparkling, refreshing accounts of Debussy, Schumann and Strauss in the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln season-opening gala.

With utter technical mastery, the ACO extract every emotion from a concert that gets progressively darker as the evening proceeds.