Audiences are unpredictable things. This concert should have been one of the hottest tickets of this Proms season, with the Concertgebouw playing Brahms's First Symphony under its chief conductor; yet the ovations that greeted the encores came from a hall that was only two-thirds full.
Perhaps it was Lutoslawski's Concerto for Orchestra in the first half that put people off. If so, more fool them - this brittle but brilliant work is enormously direct. It was given a slightly cool but very persuasive performance here. The ebullient first movement seemed a perfectly constructed arch, and the second seethed and scurried with a precision that was almost effortless.
Always an elegant conductor, Mariss Jansons began the Passacaglia poised like a cat about to pounce on the double bass section, then kept a tight rein on this movement's menacing turbulence, effecting a beautifully calm transition into the simple wind chorale at the centre, and winding up the acceleration at the end excitingly.
The Lutoslawski was a good foil for the Brahms, but it was the latter work that was the high point, Jansons's flair for illuminating a work's structure coming unmistakably into play in an interpretation that was satisfying both on an intellectual level and, thanks in particular to some ravishing wind playing, on a purely musical level too.
Jansons's steady tempo kept the first movement weighty and solemn. The move to the major key in the final bars provided a rush of real feeling that continued into the two middle movements, both in major keys - the second sumptuous, the third with an easy flow. Once this dialectic had been established, the move from minor to major for the big tune of the finale, set up by a ringingly affirmative flute melody, seemed more of a meaningful resolution than ever.
The idea of this work as a battle between minor and major, dark and light, has rarely been put across so convincingly.
