Globetrotters take a deft triumphal tour

Filarmonica della Scala Usher Hall

There are two ways that visiting orchestras can make an impression: they can lean on their illustrious tradition and distinctive sound, or they can set out to prove that they’re not defined by that tradition and that they can switch between styles as deftly as any other globe-trotting orchestra.

For their two Edinburgh Festival concerts, the orchestra of La Scala in Milan shrewdly opted to do both. The orchestra was founded by Claudio Abbado in 1982, but its rich, glowing sound seemed to have the accumulated depth of centuries behind it. They have a richly lyrical gift, too, as was revealed in Romanian Rhapsody No 2 by the under-rated George Enescu. The piece is shot through with rhapsodic, melancholy melodies of a fascinatingly modal, folky hue, beautifully shaped by the orchestra and its principal conductor, Riccardo Chailly.

Second in this concert devoted to Eastern European music was the Viola Concerto by Bartók, a much more complicated proposition. It was completed after Bartók’s death by one of his pupils, so one is often nagged by a sense that it isn’t entirely authentic. But not here. Violist Julian Rachlin’s performance was so eloquent and impassioned that all doubts were swept away. Shostakovich’s 12th symphony, The Year 1917, was equally eloquent, but this couldn’t disguise the work’s bombastic repetitiveness and hollow triumphalism.

The next day, the orchestra returned to home territory, with an all-italian programme. There was plenty more bombast in Respighi’s Fountains of Rome and Pines of Rome, and the orchestra didn’t disappoint in the music’s overwhelming evocations of long-vanished imperial grandeur.

However, the concert’s emotional heart lay in the performances of Verdi’s Stabat Mater and Te Deum. Here, the orchestra was joined by the Edinburgh Festival Chorus, on riveting form. They caught all the terror, minatory sternness and yearning for consolation that make these enigmatic masterworks so moving.