THE day of this concert someone told me that she aims to “suck the juices out of life”.

It strikes me that Northern Sinfonia’s Thomas Zehetmair is the sort of conductor who likes to suck the juices out of music.

He wants the Sinfonia to perform “as if the ink were still wet on the page”. And it is clear that he strives to squeeze every drop of passion and drama from the current Romantic Symphony series.

At the end of the dynamic final movement of Robert Schumann’s Symphony no 3 in E flat, Rhenish, Zehetmair was literally jumping up and down on his podium, much to the delight of the crowd in Hall One.

Schumann’s Rhenish Symphony was composed in 1850, following a move to Düsseldorf, and was partly inspired by the Rhineland countryside along with the awe-inspiring magnificence of Cologne Cathedral. It is more triumphant in style than the piece which was chosen to precede it: Symphony no 3 in F by Johannes Brahms, whom Schumann mentored.

However, there are similarities between both third symphonies, including the use of folk tunes and the humbling influence of Beethoven.

Brahms’ work from 1883 makes reference to Schumann’s Symphony no 3, but is far less majestic and this later symphony is wrought with subtleties of emotion, masterfully evoked by Zehetmair’s Sinfonia.

Tamzin Lewis