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Barry Millington's rating
Reader rating
Description: Andris Nelsons conducts the orchestra and pianist Stephen Hough for John Casken's Orion Over Farne, Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No 2 In G and Stravinsky's The Firebird.
Phone: 0207589 8212
Website: www.royalalberthall.com
Trains: Tube: High Street Kensington 
, Tube / Bus: 9, 10, 52, 360 
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Superbly-paced: Andris Nelsons
Stephen Hough is a man on a mission. In this year’s Proms he’s playing all the solo works for piano and orchestra by Tchaikovsky and doing his best to persuade us that each is worth our consideration. He is an eloquent advocate: orally, in print and at the keyboard. And if he didn’t quite succeed in convincing that the Third Piano Concerto on the opening night was a winner, he was on stronger ground last night with the Second in G major.
There are problems with this piece too, though: some banal quasi-military music alongside real lyrical inspiration in the first movement, and the familiar complaint of audible structural seams — though these were skilfully gift-wrapped in the finale.
Hough seized hold of the charger of a first-movement cadenza, galloping as though he were in competition with the Olympic javelin shuttle. Indeed, there was more than a whiff of the superhuman in the closing moments of the concerto, too. All good crowd-pleasing stuff — but to these ears Tchaikovsky is more interesting in elegiac than triumphal mode.
Rather more nuanced is the music of John Casken, one of Britain’s leading composers, who celebrated his 60th birthday a few days ago. His Orion over Farne invokes both Greek mythology (Orion the Hunter) and the nocturnal sky over Northumberland, where he lives. The first and last movements of this work, effectively a symphony, strive upwards, like Orion, towards the sun, finally achieving a tranquil resolution. All four movements demonstrate Casken’s fabulously inventive and resourceful ear: sonorities glisten like stars in the night sky.
That clarity was a tribute also to Andris Nelsons, the highly talented Latvian conductor now in charge of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and making his Proms debut. He and they rose brilliantly to the challenge of Stravinsky’s dazzling score The Firebird.
Nelsons’ bodily movements are as graceful, as animated as the music: a delicate twist of his raised left hand replicates the sound of a celesta hanging in the air.
His fine players responsive to every gesture, Nelsons revelled in the languorous beauty of the score, its silky, ultra-refined, kaleidoscopic textures.
As if the build-up in the final sections, superbly paced, were not thrilling enough, three trumpeters appeared in front of the organ to crown the closing bars from on high. Absolutely spine-tingling.
Information: 0845 4015040; www.bbc.co.uk/proms. On BBC Radio 3 at 2pm next Monday.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
