Sala: Stadthalle, Heidelberg

Yordan Kamdzhalov's final concert as GMD Heidelberg presents Alina Pogostkina in a glowing performance of Vasks' Distant Light, and shines in Bruckner 9 with reconstructed finale.

The conductor raised his baton to embark on the fourth movement – there was some slight disturbance in the hall. He lowered his hands and waited. He raised the baton again and waited. When silence was absolute he gave the sign for the timpanist to sound the pianissimo, misterioso drum roll that ushers in this extraordinary movement.

This concert, to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Wagner’s birth, opened with that composer’s most influential phrase – the beginning of the prelude to Tristan und Isolde wherein the Tristan chord, which is reputed to have had such an unsettling effect on the harmonic language of all who followed, first stole upon the ears of 19th-century music lovers.