MUSIC / Graveyard humour: Raymond Monelle on the RSO and the Concertgebouw in Edinburgh

THE IDEA of using Shakespeare's Hamlet as a pivot for the concert by the Royal Scottish Orchestra at the Usher Hall, came, apparently, from Gennadi Rozhdestvensky. Many composers have tried their hand at illustrating the play, revealing that different cultures make different things of Shakespeare; while the British consider Hamlet a study in psychological complexity, the Russians see it as spooky and melodramatic.

This gave a certain unity, perhaps, to the three works by Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich, but it made the programme seem under-nourishing. The conductor had himself compiled a 'concerto scenario' based on Shostakovich's music for the film by Grigori Kozintsev, adding a few awful fanfares by Alexander Varlamov. There was typical use of the orchestra's most extreme resources, the piccolo, solo violin and gong. The Dies Irae was ghoulishly quoted and there was an atmosphere of cold night winds and graveyards.

The play's more sociable scenes were suggested by jaunty dance tunes and wheezy waltzes. But overall, it was the aspect of corpse-light and madness that the composer captured, and the orchestra collaborated with glee.

Prokofiev's incidental music seemed more ephemeral. As somebody said at the interval, when he gets into the mood for writing march tunes in C major, there is not much you can do. There were also a few songs; real singers had been imported for these, though they were clearly simple ditties meant for actors.

The magnificent Fantasy Overture of Tchaikovsky would have been the most important work if it had been taken less breezily. There is terror and darkness in this piece, but Rozhdestvensky took it broadly, with well-upholstered violin tunes and a caressing oboe, as though it were a kind of gloss to the better-known Romeo and Juliet.

The audience was small for the home team, but more people came to the Hall on Monday to hear the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in spite of their uninspiring programme. The only possible reason for bringing Haydn and Beethoven to an international festival is that you have something special to say about them, but the conductor, Riccardo Chailly, had almost nothing. The Farewell Symphony, a work that can sound desolate and tragic, seemed like an exercise for GCSE, all repeats being taken and played exactly the same both times; and since the players did not go out one by one at the end - a touching and perfectly authentic routine - the dwindling of the forces to two violins was quite pointless.

The most you could say of the orchestra, on this showing, was that they have some interesting individuals amongst the wind, a spell-weaving clarinettist and a blithe, songful flautist. The string tone was lukewarm and not together, and the conductor sought out light dance textures joined by dubious gear changes, giving a feeling that the music was going nowhere, especially in the slow introduction to Beethoven's Fourth Symphony. The best moments in this work were in the slow movement, a celestial clarinet solo redeeming the effect of dowdy strings.

The slow stillnesses of Berio's Requies, the work he wrote in memory of Cathy Berberian, sounded like clouds slowly drifting across a sky, sometimes threatening, usually serene. There were moments of elfin clamour that scarcely impeded this lovely work's calm progress. The Dutch players endowed it with glistening and lucid colours. It was a reminder that contemporary music, once a major feature of the Festival, has now been distressingly marginalised.

The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra plays Webern, Maderna and Tchaikovsky at the Proms tonight, 7.30pm Royal Albert Hall, SW7, and live on Radio 3.