It should be a recipe for musical indigestion: begin with a piece lasting 15 minutes, follow it with the interval, then have everyone troop back for an 80-minute symphony.

In the event, the second of Ivan Volkov's Proms with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra proved neatly balanced. Both Gyorgy Kurtag's Stele (Memorial stones) and Gustav Mahler's Ninth Symphony are responses to death; Kurtag's piece is short and pithy, Mahler's is not, yet they made ideal companions.

Stele begins with an anguished orchestral shout that becomes a moan, then a series of longing sighs; Volkov controlled the transitions exactly. The Lament rages against the dying of the light, and its yelps and slaps were truly frightening. The final movement seemed to offer consolation but, without descending into bathos, the closing sobs suggested otherwise. Although Stele does not reveal every detail in a single hearing, Volkov's players uncovered more than most.

When Mahler wrote his Ninth Symphony, his daughter had recently died, and his own fatal heart condition had been diagnosed. Many performances exaggerate the morbidity, but not Volkov's. Some might have regretted that, but better reticence than overblown rhetoric that underlines every moment. The solo violin phrases that closed the first movement had the quality of being whispered in your ear, nor was there any over-galumphing in the second movement's quasi-peasant dances.

At the end, the music seemed to hold on to its last breath for so long that it was impossible to tell precisely when silence descended.