**** WHATEVER else it might have been, and it was many things, the SCO's concert on Friday night was an enthralling magical mystery tour of the world of sonority. Sure, to the aficionado at least, there is nothing unfamiliar about Kodaly's gipsy-inspired Dances of Galanta or Bartok's great masterpiece, the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste.

****

WHATEVER else it might have been, and it was many things, the SCO's concert on Friday night was an enthralling magical mystery tour of the world of sonority. Sure, to the aficionado at least, there is nothing unfamiliar about Kodaly's gipsy-inspired Dances of Galanta or Bartok's great masterpiece, the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste.

But one does not often hear them like this, in an acoustic as supportive and helpful as the City Hall, which gave a glow to the collective sound while creating a sonic arena in which every detail, especially in the Bartok, atmospherically and lucidly conducted by Baldur Bronnimann, was transparent.

The Kodaly was splendidly rich, with a full-flavoured tang and sense of improvisatory freedom that comes only from rigorous discipline, which the SCO possesses in abundance. The music rang around the City Hall, and continued ringing in the imagination after the performance had finished.

As for the Bartok: what a showing it received, with a performance of supreme stealth at the start when, section by section, the SCO strings slowly unfolded the sinewy theme that appeared to creep around the acoustic, gradually filling the space.

But the ace of the night, sonically and colouristically, was Haflidi Hallgrimsson's beautiful Double Bass Concerto, played with unbroken concentration and a formidable mix of lyricism and intensity by the departing SCO principal Nicholas Bayley.

The magic and the mystery in the concerto extended way beyond the solo part to the composer's extraordinary orchestration, where, in a real democracy of sonority, every instrument in the orchestra worked with the soloist, creating a ravishing sound world, weaving a wonderful halo of sound around the double bass. A top-drawer piece by a master craftsman.