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Description: The orchestra under David Robertson perform Beethoven's Grosse Fuge and Symphony No 5 In C Minor, and Elliott Carter's Oboe Concerto, featuring Nicholas Daniel.
Phone: 0207589 8212
Website: www.royalalberthall.com
Trains: Tube: High Street Kensington 
, Tube / Bus: 9, 10, 52, 360 
Extra info: Food, Pub
In control: Principal Guest Conductor David Robertson
How cheering to have been one of the people in the crowded Albert Hall enjoying their first live encounter with Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, its 134th performance at the Proms. The challenge to make this impossibly famous score fresh is harder than tackling a knotty world premiere - the daily bread of an ensemble like the BBC Symphony Orchestra, skilled ambassadors of the new whose talent for the old is sometimes overlooked.
Under the baton of Principal Guest Conductor, David Robertson, they brought poise and clarity to this revolutionary 1808 masterpiece. Robertson avoided heavy-handed interpretation, keeping an urgent pulse and allowing almost no pause between movements. Only an unexpected but beautifully executed oboe solo in the first movement, almost languid in its free tempo, stood out as idiosyncratic.
The players themselves savoured the chance to pour their energies into a work thatmay have led them towards their chosen careers in the first place. After a smudgy start, with fate knocking at the door rather too mildly, this was a stirring performance, with heartfelt, vigorous playing.
The evening opened with Beethoven's Grosse Fuge Op 133 for string orchestra. The lite programme notes did not reveal the origins of the edition, or its performance history which was frustrating. But this version had curiosity value, as if the spare, lean fury of the original string quartet score had gained spare inches on the hips, and a more mellow amplitude.
The centrepiece was Elliott Carter's Oboe Concerto (1986/7), part of the centenary celebrations of this most humane and generous of musicians. Here the reduced forces of the BBCSO were on strongest form, providing a glistening accompaniment to the virtuosic soloist Nicholas Daniel. Carter lays out his glass beads in a game of mystifying complexity. A performer like Daniel reveals the luminous beauty in it, too.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
