Nordic Adventures – led by Norwegian conductor Eivind Aadland – highlighted the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra’s strengths, with plenty of sweeping melodies, sonorous textures, and rich harmonies. It opened with Arnold Bax’s 1919 tone poem Tintagel. The composer began writing the work after visiting Tintagel Castle, a medieval fortress on the cliffs of the Cornwall coast, and drew on the site’s mythological associations with the tales of King Arthur, and the story of Tristan and Isolde.

Tintagel begins in a gentle, pastoral mood, with shimmering upper strings, and bird-like trills from the flute, before a dramatic escalation featuring the brass section, which the composer described as “a tonal impression of the castle-crowned cliff of Tintagel, and, more especially, of the long distances of the Atlantic.” The latter part of the piece features evocative swells in volume and texture, building to a suitable dramatic ending. The ASO’s strings were in particularly fine form in this work, producing a truly sumptuous sound in the climatic moments.

^{Eivind Aadland and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Photo © Annika Stennert}

Although Tintagel shared some stylistic elements with the other music on the programme, as a work by an English...