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Anyone fearing that we were being invaded as the RSNO began the final instalment of Saturday's Mediterranean interlude might have had good cause. Even guest conductor Gilbert Varga looked a little panic-stricken as he gazed over his shoulder up to the balcony while ushering on his charges onstage. Varga was, of course, only ensuring the auxiliary horns upstairs were on cue.

Or he might have been ensuring the hairs on the backs of people's necks were sticking up; in your reviewer's case, they were. This happened more than once and not just during Respighi's Roman Festivals, which brought this concert to a close by, in places, making the chariot race from Ben Hur seem like the Badminton Horse Trials by comparison.

There was drop-dead gorgeous playing in all the preceding pieces, including guitarist Milos Karadagli's encore of a solo milonga to follow a vivid reading of Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez, which contained flamenco gutsiness as well as finely measured phrasing.

Varga brought out all the detail – beautiful rolling waltz-time cellos in Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances; a particularly lovely bass sound in the second movement of the Rodrigo – with apparently little effort. But he threw himself into Roman Festivals with an enlarged orchestra absolutely alert to the composition's big stabbing punctuations juxtaposed with the gentlest murmurings of strings, the discreet work of 10 percussionists and even a mandolin cameo.

This was Roman hedonism writ large, with mad carousels – or maybe carousals – and a revelling trombone adding to a spectacle that could have resulted in carnage, but was brought to almost pictorial life with marvellous expertise.