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From the alert playing that Yamada drew from the players it was clear, too, that they
respond well to his ideas. The performances of Strauss’s symphonic poem Don Juan
and Mahler’s Fourth Symphony were unfailingly spirited, even brash at times – the
Strauss especially – but there was real panache about both of them. Yamada certainly
doesn’t hold back at the big moments; some of the fortissimos tested even Symphony
Hall’s exceptional acoustic, though at the other extreme, there was an absence of
genuinely quiet playing.

There was a touch of schmaltz about the Mahler, which was accentuated by Yamada’s
fondness for signalling transitions with diminuendos and sometimes rather exaggerated
rubato, while the undercurrent of darkness that runs through the symphony was mostly
unexplored. It was left to the soprano soloist in the finale, Fatma Said, to undercut the
innocence of the Wunderhorn text with something more menacing.

Between the Strauss and the Mahler, it was Said who provided the evening’s most
memorable moments in two late Mozart arias. Vado, ma Dove?, K583, written as an
addition to an opera by Martín y Soler, showed off the Egyptian singer’s fabulously
light, easy coloratura, while the central section of Non Più di Fiori, one of Vitellia’s
numbers from La Clemenza di Tito, revealed a thrilling smoky darkness to her chest
register, with the CBSO’s principal clarinet, Oliver Janes, providing the supple clarinet
obligato.

Available on BBC Sounds until 18 February