In what way, it seems fair to ask, was the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s second season concert a “Mozart Gala” while the previous week’s focus on a single composer merely a “Celebration of Dvorak”? It would be nice to be able to report a City Hall full of ball gowns and evening dress, but that was not the case.

If anything the Czech composer was better celebrated, because by the SCO’s high standards, especially under Principal Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev, this programme lacked the sort of unique sparkle they usually bring to Mozart’s music.

Perhaps it was a slightly unfamiliar look to the forces on stage in certain sections, some familiar faces missing and the first violins in particular a little out of sorts. Guest leader Eva Aronian looked to be with the conductor in terms of expression and dynamics, but not at the head of an ensemble.

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Things had sharpened up by the Finale of the Prague Symphony, but that was more due to the very fine ensemble playing of the winds.

The big work in the second half was Mozart’s Mass in C and here too things were not quite as stellar as we have come to expect, in this case from the SCO Chorus, usually a choir of unimpeachable quality. There was definite lack of assurance about the opening of the Kyrie, and the start of the Gloria that followed was also slightly ragged by these singers’ own high standards.

The soloists lifted the work, however, not that the men – tenor Thomas Walker and especially bass baritone Edward Grint – had a great deal to do. Sopranos Lucy Crowe and Anna Dennis were magnificent, perfectly complementary in tone and approach, the former pure-voiced and the other more dramatic and rooted in Mozart’s opera-world. Their Domine Deus duet was a highlight of the complex structure of that Gloria.

The concert had been introduced, with his usual charm, by the SCO’s associate composer Jay Capperauld, who wondered what Mozart would have said in his shoes. Perhaps, in fact, the composer would have been surprised that a work he never bothered to finish was the focus of a “Gala” concert.

With the only quartet from the soloists coming briefly in the Benedictus before a choral Hosanna finishes the work, the Mass in C will never be the Mozart that people are champing at the bit to hear.