The incidental Music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream is among the best known in the works of Felix Mendelssohn, not least because it includes the Wedding March to which countless brides have tripped down the aisle.

It is much less usual to hear the entire suite, an hour-long musical condensation of the play that is rather more than its title suggests. Alongside the composer’s magnificent melodies and orchestration, shimmering and opulent, the other key element is the text extracted from Shakespeare, which was superbly delivered in this performance by Christine Steel, her verse-speaking an example of clarity and expression with just enough Puckish fun.

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Conductor Thomas Sondergard took the score at a very deliberate pace, making sure everything and everyone onstage had their moment in the spotlight. That includes the RSNO Youth Chorus, who were absolutely on point at the end of the work although they had been sitting silent for many minutes between their contributions.

Soloists Carine Tinney and Rosamond Thomas were, like the young people, singing from memory, and from behind the orchestra, and the balance of their clear soprano and mezzo voices with the chorus and the orchestra was pretty much flawless. The instrumentalists, however, have all the best tunes, with first flute Katherine Bryan and guest principal horn Olivia Gandee soaring and the RSNO strings on stellar form.

Felix’s sister, Fanny Hensel, had started the evening, her own Overture in C Major not so much a rediscovered work as one undeservedly ignored for much of its existence. The evidence suggests that big sister had a significant hand in some of young Felix’s precocious early works, and the current interest in her mature works is richly deserved.

Some might quibble too at just how “lost” are some of The Lost Words in the verses by Robert Macfarlane that inspired James Burton’s work for children’s choir that was the showcase for the RSNO Youth Chorus in its full form. Director Patrick Barrett had his young charges precision-drilled for their performance, a Scottish Premiere and a global first outing for the orchestrated versions of two of the seven songs.

Not especially challenging harmonically, the structure of these songs is often extremely intricate and the young people were entirely unperturbed by the challenges, delivering the text with immaculate diction. There was a pastoral sumptuousness to much of the music, but the variation in tone was the real delight, Newt and Conker possibly choir favourites, but the closing pairing of the lush Willow and the scampering flight of Wren winning enthusiastic audience approval.