However much the gainsayers complain of his risky, whistle-stop approach to conducting, Valery Gergiev alone could command an entire weekend of Russian music at the Proms and ensure gripping performances. Not everything was perfect. Yet he proved himself, as he loomed over his players, fingers trembling, hand shaping each phrase into life, still the world's most exhilarating conductor, who lives every note as one possessed.

Friday's Prom was with the London Symphony Orchestra, whose chief conductor he becomes next year. Shostakovich's early ballet, The Golden Age, offered a witty starter. The evening's highlight was Schnittke's Viola Concerto, a subtle and lyrical masterpiece written for its peerless soloist, Yuri Bashmet. To hear a more authentic performance would be impossible, a finer one inconceivable

Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony, Pathétique, had supple, nervous energy, with exquisite detail and fine solos, especially by principal clarinet (Andrew Marriner).

Gergiev seemed to want more than the strings could give, cajoling the firsts and turning his back on the seconds. Was he looking for the kind of coarse darkness he gets from his Mariinsky players? At the close, after the wrenching lament of the finale, Gergiev held the Prommers in a long silence before allowing them to erupt.

Mariinsky Opera/Gergiev
Albert Hall, SW7
****

If only the audience had been equally obedient at Saturday's Mariinsky concert, when a few clappers nearly wrecked the Violin Concerto by Sibelius, with Russian star Vadim Repin as soloist. After a febrile first movement, and a slowly orgiastic Adagio, Repin rested his hand, poised, on the bow; Gergiev kept his arm mid-air. The message was clear: silence.

Repin looked deflated by the noisy thoughtless few, and seemed to lose concentration in the soaring dance finale.

The main work was Shostakovich's Symphony No. 13, Babi Yar, which sets poems by Yevtushenko. Despite some rough edges in chorus ensemble, this was an impassioned delivery all the more heartfelt by the late-substitute bass solo of Mikhail Petrenko. This young beanpole produces a magnificent, resonant tone and had all the fervour in his declamations and reveries the poet himself displayed in his public readings.

Lady Macbeth of the Mtensk District
*****

Petrenko also made his mark in the cameo role of comic priest in Sunday's shattering performance of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, just weeks after the company performed the revised version at the Coliseum. Larisa Gogolevskaya brought compelling, guttural force to the title role, leading an outstanding cast, chorus and orchestra.

After 10 minutes of foot stamping and cheers, the Prommers finally let the Russians go home.