For his final concert as music director of the Royal Northern Sinfonia, Thomas Zehetmair decided to go out with a bang. Four very loud, extremely rapid bangs to be specific, as he launched into a valedictory version of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony with an attack so urgent and incisive it sounded less like destiny hammering at the door than destiny forcing an entrance with emergency equipment.
It's testimony to Zehetmair's mercurial talent that he's still capable of springing these surprises even in the most familiar repertoire. In the 12 years of his tenure, Zehetmair has elevated the Sinfonia from a middling municipal band based in the town hall to an international-calibre chamber orchestra housed in one of the most acoustically perfect and visually striking concert halls in Europe. To crown it all, in 2013 the ensemble was designated "Royal".
That Zehetmair is also one of the world's foremost violinists represented one of the greatest two-for-one deals imaginable. Yet this has been the era of the Zehetmairs, plural; and the farewell programme paid tribute to the magnificent addition to the Sinfonia family that Zehetmair's wife, the violist Ruth Killius, has been.
Killius's deeply personal reading of Bartók's etiolated viola concerto had the dark, foreboding rasp of a death rattle. The highlight, however, was the premiere of a beguilingly intimate double concerto commissioned by the Zehetmairs from John Casken. Taking its title, That Subtle Knot, from a John Donne poem, the two-part homage to a remarkable relationship opened with some of Casken's most becalmed, pastoral writing and became so fired up towards the conclusion that Zehetmair, conducting with his hands full, communicated the intensity to the orchestra by jumping up and down.
For an emotional and heartfelt ovation, the Sage was suddenly bathed in iridescent light with the simple message "Danke" projected around the auditorium. They wouldn't have been able to do that at the old town hall, that's for sure.
• Available to listen again on iPlayer until 18 June.
