Barbican, London
The young players delivered atmospheric Ravel, edge-of-seat Nielsen and powerful Thorvaldsdottir with full force

The National Youth Orchestra clearly lucked out when it bagged charismatic conductor Jaime Martín. The London Philharmonic’s former principal flute is a real musician’s musician, a quality immediately apparent in the way he coaxed characterful solos from attentive players over the course of Ravel’s Boléro.

The theme for this year’s tour is Illuminate, most appositely represented by Nielsen’s Symphony No 4, The Inextinguishable. The lighting metaphor went further, however, from nifty, pinpoint highlighting as players stood in turn in the Ravel to an atmospheric light show that lent visual weight to the emotional depths plumbed by Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s powerful Catamorphosis.