BBC SSO & Claire Booth, Glasgow review: 'spellbinding' world premiere for Helen Grime's new song cycle

Its four songs - to texts by novelist Zoe Gilbert adapted from her novel of the same name - filled the programme’s opening half. Booth, visibly excited by the author’s eerie folkloric images, and by the ecstatic intensity and enchanting deep-rooted lyricism of Grime’s music, absolutely lived the experience. The SSO’s Ryan Wigglesworth conducted a world premiere that engaged imaginatively with the music’s spry, Britten-like lucidity and Grimes’ enchanting originality.

Feverishly animated, with exaggerated hand gestures that just about did the conductor’s job for him, and with enlivening vocal dexterity, Booth commanded the stage - in the fiery seductiveness of Prick Song, the poetic eloquence of Fishkin Hareskin ravishingly underpinned by perfumed textures, the brutal intoxication of Water Bull Bride, and a final lamentation - Long Have I Lain Beside the Water - punctuated persistently by the ritual pathos of a piercing brass motif which, whether by accident or design, seemed to preempt the trumpet solo that would later open the Mahler symphony.

When that moment came, it was slightly dampened by a Mahler 5 that set off like an ageing car on a wintry morning. Nothing to do with the working parts. Mark O’Keeffe’s martial trumpeting was invigorating, the strings ripe and the wind effecting a rugged keenness in response.

What it mostly lacked was unfaltering momentum. Wigglesworth fought hard to make the mood swings, the surges and hiatuses, work. Yet we were left only with isolated moments to savour. Highlights were the radiant stillness of the Adagietto and the sunburst brass peroration of the Finale. Magic flowed in instalments.