This excellent BBC Philharmonic Prom began with a surprising rarity. Mozart’s ballet from Idomeneo is normally cut in the theatre, where it comes at the end of what is already a long opera. But it is nearly half an hour of music from the early, mature Mozart and is worth anyone’s attention. The highlights were a big chaconne, a delicious gavotte that was recycled in the K503 piano concerto years later and a stormingly brilliant pas seul, which rounded out a resequencing selected by Nicholas Collon , who conducted with notable style throughout the evening.
The rest of the programme had a French theme, particularly if you accept Stravinsky as an honorary Frenchman. Jean-Efflam Bavouzet was the thoroughly engaged yet idiomatic soloist, living every bar in Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major. This was very much a communal effort, with Collon’s more measured than usual opening movement tempo allowing orchestral detail and interplay to flower very rewardingly, so that one caught every shimmer in the percussion and harps and each gurgle in the woodwinds. Bavouzet then raised the roof with a fleet and fantastic encore, Pierné’s Etude de Concert, op 13.
Two contemporary orchestrations of French miniatures followed, both of them world premieres. Colin Matthews captured the chiaroscuro of Ravel’s Oiseaux Tristes from Miroirs with a keen sense of colour but, at least in terms of the sheer musical impact of its 11 percussionists, his efforts yielded to Christopher Dingle’s exciting and vivid realisation of Messiaen’s L’Oiseau Tui, which the composer completed in outline but then omitted from his late orchestral work Éclairs sur l’Au-delà.
These miniatures were wrapped around a performance of Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements , in which the pulse of the first movement was unerring but the orchestral balance, always difficult in the Albert Hall, was not always ideal, though the clipped cool of the andante was neatly done. Ravel’s La valse , elusive and disturbing as ever, rounded off an evening of considerable distinction and interest.
