Two dazzling musical evocations of stunning landscapes, both brilliant orchestral showpieces, conducted by RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra Chief Conductor Jaime Martín mark the return of RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra LIVE.

The concert will see Martín return to Deirdre McKay’s Meltwater, a work he premiered in 2009 on his first appearance in Ireland with the Irish Chamber Orchestra. Evocative in its spellbinding marriage of complexity and directness, it takes its inspiration from what the composer describes as ‘the desolate beauty of our planet’s most extreme and inhabitable landscapes’.

Exhilarating and powerful, eerie and poetic, Meltwater’s slicing, shivering strings conjure the icy chill and freezing, snow-covered tundras of polar extremes with an otherworldly quality that calls to mind Arvo Pärt and Vaughan Williams’ Sinfonia Antartica.

Mendelssohn’s rich, melody-filled ‘Scottish’ Symphony is one of the glories of musical Romanticism. Inspired by a holiday in Scotland’s highlands and islands, and by the country’s history and literature, it is as much a love poem as a heavenly hymn to the epic and picturesque time-sculpted vistas of Scotland.

Subtly laced with accents of traditional Scottish folk music, this Third Symphony is a graceful and stirring tour de force laced with all the bracing, panoramic grandeur of Scotland’s wild beauty and brimming with one memorable tune after another.

WATCH: Live-streamed on www.rte.ie/culture
LISTEN: Broadcast live on RTÉ lyric fm