This is Gianandrea Noseda's last season as the BBC Philharmonic's chief conductor and there is already a sense of retrospection in the air. His repertoire, in part, peers back over his tenure to remind us self-consciously of its high points. The main work of his opening concert was Beethoven's Fifth, which inevitably recalls the famous 2005 symphony cycle that took him and his orchestra to the top of the download charts. As an addition to the planned programme he also gave us Smetana's Richard III, which flagged up his important, if controversial, exploration on disc of the Czech composer's major orchestral works.
Revisiting past successes can produce ambiguous results. Noseda's Beethoven still excites, but no longer startles, for the simple reason that since 2005 we have become more familiar with its lean ferocity and embattled spirit. Smetana's Shakespearian symphonic poem, meanwhile, is apt to confuse us because it evokes a mood of fraught, almost Byronic nobility that sits uneasily with our perceptions of the play. But the sensuous dignity of this performance also told us why its re-examination was so necessary.
It wasn't all nostalgia. The overture to Verdi's La Forza del Destino, done with tense restraint, looked to the Otello with which Noseda ends his season next year. Then there was the Grieg Piano Concerto with Stephen Hough as soloist. Hough and Noseda both have a talent for making us rethink the familiar, and this was a superb achievement – high romantic rather than mutedly gracious, Brahmsian in its weight and punch, and formidable in its intensity.
