Bruckner at the Wigmore Hall. Yes, you heard right: a Bruckner symphony – his second: usually performed by 80-odd musicians – on a stage scarcely larger than my bedroom. How? Welcome to Anthony Payne’s very smart 2013 chamber arrangement. Bruckner on Ozempic.

Composition is an Alice in Wonderland activity. A key duty is mastering how to make things bigger and smaller, how to stretch and compress and bend – time and space and sound. Bruckner understood this well. If you know anything about his symphonies, it’s that they’re vast – and that critics are mandated to compare them to cathedrals or mountain ranges. What survives after such an extreme trim? More than you expect. The long sightlines remain; paradoxically, the reduced forces sharpen the sense of depth. Even the symphonic atmosphere is hard to shake off when you still, as here, have a timpanist in play. Feel that kettle-drum rumble and it’s impossible not to believe you’re in the presence of a full orchestra.

But lean, hench Bruckner is still something to behold. Look how lithe his hips become. This was an impish Bruckner 2, a seedy harmonium wheezing mischief and threat. A fiercely committed ensemble of soloists from the Royal Academy of Music made the lyricism........

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