Stirring and sophisticated: RLPO, Chooi, Hindoyan, at the Philharmonic Hall, reviewed

Daniel Barenboim was supposed to perform with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra earlier this month. His recent health concerns made that impossible, but it was a reminder that for the first time since the appointment of the late Libor Pesek in 1987, the RLPO is under the direction of a conductor soaked in the German tradition. Domingo Hindoyan, the orchestra’s chief conductor since autumn 2021, was born in Venezuela and has a soft spot for French music, but Barenboim is his mentor and there’s a gravity – an intellectual centre – to his conducting that made me eager to hear him get to grips with the sacred monsters of German romanticism.

It’s something of an RLPO tradition, after all. Max Bruch – whose Scottish Fantasy opened Hindoyan’s programme – moved to Liverpool in 1880 as the orchestra’s chief conductor, taking a yellow-brick semi near Sefton Park and inviting the likes of Joseph Joachim to Merseyside.