Proms 2007

Latvian-born Mariss Jansons's gift of instilling all he does with joy and seriousness turns every concert into a rare event as the first of his two Proms with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra proved.

The constant surprise with Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra is that after the 2001: A Space Odyssey brass fanfare there's another half-hour of complex music. This Nietzschean symphonic poem, scored for huge orchestra with large bell, organ and two harps, sounded limpid and glowing. Jansons's command of the orchestra was at once energising and restrained, like the ever-alternating music. The silken strings span their lines with airborne grace, while brass and percussion provided superheroic, seismic vitality.

Economy of form characterises Sibelius's Symphony No2 in D major. It evolves out of a tiny three-note idea, not by organic growth but through juxtaposition of fragments like a darkly shimmering mosaic. The melancholy timbres were brought out superbly by the Bavarians. They concluded with contrasting encores: Sibelius's over-familiar Valse Triste, given delicate fresh life, and a noisy excerpt from Bartok's Miraculous Mandarin.

A late-night Prom by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, conducted by Oliver Knussen, included Julian Anderson's mystical and beguiling Book of Hours and Knussen's Requiem, Songs for Sue, written in memory of the composer's wife, here hauntingly performed by Claire Booth.

This spellbinding concert was a reminder that Britain now boasts some of the finest compositional talent in the world, with virtuosic interpreters to match. Several of those not represented on stage - George Benjamin and Thomas Ades among them - were present in the sizeable audience. Knussen is the creative catalyst, and one of the most generous musicians alive. He, like Jansons, makes every concert a special event. Two star turns in the same evening feels dangerously close to excess.