Music review: The St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra & Peter Donohoe, Usher Hall, Edinburgh

Russian orchestras can have a habit of doing things their own way, claimed UK pianist Peter Donohoe in a Scotsman interview last week looking ahead to this perplexing concert. And never more so than in Russian music, it seems, on the strength of their often rather unconvincing playing in the Usher Hall. The St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra is no doubt a fine band, as demonstrated by their moments of lightning-quick precision, of rousing climaxes, of sudden eruptions of passion. Which made it all the more frustrating that their playing was elsewhere so doggedly lacklustre.