Business as usual at the 2010 Proms

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Not that the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra lacks allure; since Vasily Petrenko became its chief conductor, it has become a Premier League orchestra, although London rarely has the chance to see it.

Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser, and an expectant hush fell as the Macedonian pianist Simon Trpceski took his seat. Trpceski nonchalantly allowed the tension to build but when the opening chords finally arrived, his spell was instantly cast.

Some pianists like to blast their way through the concerto’s more turbulent passages; even at his most forceful, Trpceski seemed to caress the keys.

If his silvery tone sometimes threatened to sink beneath the orchestral swell and its disturbing woodwind undercurrents, it only underlined the precarious musical drama. His was a performance that looked inwards, finding delicacy in even the most Hollywoody passages while the accompaniment from Petrenko and his orchestra had nothing too lush, nothing too brash.

The rest of the programme was taken up with responses to Lord Byron’s Manfred. Mahler’s re-orchestration of Schumann’s Manfred overture adds little to the original but the RLPO caught the moody restlessness. Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony works on a larger scale, and the opening interplay between bassoons and bass clarinet set the sulphurous mood for a performance in which fizz and bubble only occasionally brushed aside the menace and misery.

Repeated Radio 3 tomorrow, BBC2 Saturday. bbc.co.uk/proms

BBC Proms: Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/Petrenko
Royal Albert Hall
Kensington Gore, SW7 2AP