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Sheku Kanneh-Mason shows emotional depth in Shostakovich's Second Cello Concerto, while the lightness of the RSNO Junior Chorus creates a heavenward-bound Fauré Requiem. 

Britten's profoundly pacifist work is given a calm reading by Peter Oundjian and the RSNO: soprano Erin Wall, the RSNO Junior Chorus and the wind players provide the high spots of the evening.

The RSNO’s Mahler 3 is jubilant, life-affirming and memorable under the conductor Peter Oundjian. 

Any performance of Mahler's Eighth Symphony is a special event. This one was a thrilling end to the Royal Scottish National Orchestra's season.

Conflict across the world pours into our homes through the immediacy of television, and we can now see harrowing images unavailable when Britten took up the commission to write a piece for the consecration of the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral in 1961/62.

RSNO concerts begin, for me and around 100 others, with the pre-concert talk. I'm especially glad of these when new to a work, such as Mendelssohn’s 1846 Elijah. A talk by those who have prepared the music for us adds something to even the most extensive “presearch”. Sir Andrew Davis, in conversation with RSNO principal trombonist Dávur Juul Magnussen, came across as extremely witty and erudite.

In this, the last of his farewell programmes, Stéphane Denève bade au revoir to Edinburgh in front of an audience of the great and the good, containing ambassadors, diplomats and ministers as well as all his Edinburgh fans. There were speeches, presentations and more than a touch of the Hollywood Academy Awards Ceremony. “But what about the music?” I hear you ask.

The final concert of the RSNO’s 2010-11 Usher Hall season was a journey from John Adams’ reflection on the tragedy of 11th September 2001 to Beethoven’s joyful statement of brotherhood in his Symphony No. 9. John Adams’ On the Transmigration of Souls was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic to mark the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

If there would be one piece to show someone asking “who is Mahler?” the third symphony would undoubtedly be my first choice. Though it does not perhaps reach the heights of expressionism of some of his later symphonies, it perfectly exemplifies everything Mahler’s music is about: contrast between emotional extremes, ingenuitive orchestration, and a juxtaposition of the sublime and trivial.