Sergei Eisenstein apparently wanted the music for his film Battleship Potemkin to be rewritten every 20 years to retain its contemporary relevance. Yet the passage of almost 85 years hasn't diminished the power of Edmund Meisel's original score, even if today the film is usually accompanied by offcuts of various Shostakovich symphonies, a version put together half a century after the film's release.

Potemkin is today considered a classic of the silent-movie era, with the shot of the pram rolling down the Odessa steps one of cinema's iconic moments, but it was conceived as a Soviet propaganda vehicle – and its success derives in no small part from the music. From the way the stirring, vaguely Tchaikovskian theme given to Potemkin's doughty crew contrasts with the sinister music associated with the ship's officers, to the tense section that accompanies the massacre on the Odessa steps, Meisel's score maximises the impact of Eisenstein's images and directs the sympathies of the audience.

The emotional effect of Meisel's music was emphasised by this live performance of the score as part of Glasgow's Merchant City festival. The lost art of accompanying silent films is something Ilan Volkov, former BBCSSO chief conductor, now principal guest, has experimented with before. He and the orchestra performed another Russian classic, Kozintsev's The New Babylon, at the same festival three years ago.

Here, they highlighted the visceral quality of Meisel's score; the challenge of synchronising with the on-screen images did not diminish Volkov's incisive approach, particularly in the climactic build-up to the confrontation between the revolutionary battleship and the admiral's fleet.

Just as the Potemkin's story ends well, this was also a rather successful event for the BBCSSO – attracting a near-capacity and conspicuously youthful audience of the kind most orchestral managers can only dream.