Sunday, August 24, 2025
Royal Albert Hall, London
This particularly attractive programme for a Sunday-afternoon Prom opened with Mozart’s ‘Paris’ Symphony (No.31, D-major, K297), compact, three movements (no Minuet), without repeats in the outer ones, sonorous, animated and rhythmically dancing from the Amsterdam-based ensemble. Klaus Mäkelä opted for the original middle movement, Andantino, quite nice, although the replacement Andante is far superior. (The R3 announcer made no mention.) Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto was also premiered in Paris, 1923. The opening tremolo stole in almost unheard, from which Janine Jansen gave a commendably edgy account of the solo part if not without refinement or shapely lyricism, the RCO icily crystalline in its classical proportions, the spiky central movement dispatched in quicksilver fashion, without varnish if plenty of buzzing, orchestral detail vibrant, leaving the Finale, as it so often does, to suggest a snow-covered landscape, Jansen’s violin screwing the tension up before returning to the Concerto’s opening and with it full-circle fulfilment. No encore, surprisingly. (JJ & KM have recorded this work in Oslo for Decca.) Following the interval, Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, written for Boston and Koussevitzky (he conducted the first performance of the Prokofiev). The RCO and Mäkelä gave a scrupulous account, although timpani were a little subdued in the first movement. The second, ‘Game of the Couples’, was spot-on in tempo, detailing and syncopation, with immaculate brass-playing at the midpoint, whereas the ‘Elegia’ was certainly dark and intense, haunted, with a glimmer of radiant hope near the end. The ‘Intermezzo’ could have been more ‘Interrupted’, Bartók parodying Shostakovich parodying Lehár. The Finale, full speed ahead, maintained poise and incident, the timpani glissando going for less than it can though, the music eventually emerging from mists to end triumphantly (as revised). An encore, started in mid-sentence, the final minutes (!) of Kodály’s Dances of Galánta.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002h7vt
The replacement middle movement, Andante. Concertgebouw/Josef Krips (1973, Philips).