Stravinsky
Symphony in Three Movements
Berg
Violin Concerto
Bartók
Concerto for Orchestra
Vilde Frang (violin)
Juilliard Orchestra
Royal Academy of Music Symphony Orchestra
Esa‐Pekka Salonen
Reviewed by: David Gutman
Reviewed: 10 August, 2026
Venue: Royal Albert Hall, London
While our own National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain has been visiting the Proms since the 1950s, tonight’s transatlantic combo made its first appearance in 2005. Of standard size, with each institution contributing just forty-something instrumentalists, it was initially helmed by Colin Davis. That Royal Academy stalwart directed a programme taking in Copland and Vaughan Williams in a nod to both distinguished music schools. Tonight’s fare may have looked less ‘national’ but its purely orchestral element was composed in and for America, idioms adjusted accordingly. The same could be said of the creative output of tonight’s composer-conductor. Esa‐Pekka Salonen has been distinctly peripatetic, his UK stopovers as conductor nowadays infrequent. On disc (you can tell this writer’s age) his performances retain their freshness, there being few questionable gestures to pall, and playing standards are invariably sky high. In concert the downside can be a certain slickness, the suspicion of emotions held too much in check whether despite or because of the supplest of stick techniques.
We began with the Stravinsky, a work much associated with Colin Davis at the Proms with as many as six renditions cited in the BBC Proms archive, featuring the LSO (1961, 1979), Concertgebouw Orchestra (1967), Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (1986), National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain (2006) and Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester (2011). That list suggests that it has long been regarded as a training ground for aspiring musicians, tricky as it is.
There were some minor slips given the heat in the hall but Salonen and his players made it all seem easy, perhaps too easy. Was Salonen taking his cue from the composer’s own stereo recording while overlooking the more rugged, effortful version he made earlier with the New York Philharmonic? Purged of struggle, the first movement conveyed instead a certain geniality, its sections of proto-Adams blithe rather than jolting. The slow movement was breezy, openly neo-classical, rarely concerned with the music’s dramatic origins, an abandoned film score for the Hollywood version of Franz Werfel’s novel The Song of Bernadette. For this listener at least the results were short on lyricism and contrast. The finale was crisp, not maximally powerful, rigorously rhythmic yet almost dapper, its final Broadway-ish flourish still a surprisingly blatant gesture. Everything hung together rather than seeming, as it sometimes can, a patchwork.
Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra after the interval would be blessed with still finer orchestral playing but next we welcomed Vilde Frang, a wonderful exponent of the ‘difficult’ Berg, a score which did not reach the Proms until 1955 and has only attracted sustained and stellar advocacy in the last half century. Frang plays it as lyrically as she would any other Romantic violin concerto and, with Salonen and the players in attentive and often helpfully sotto voce support, she never needed to fight to be heard. This was a rendition that avoided any trace of academicism or angularity, whether picking its way through a stylized Vienna or floating into the mysterious world beyond. Frang’s intonation was perfect, her tone luminous and expressive. No encore, not even the obligatory Bach. We had that within the layers of the Concerto itself, played beautifully as if by a small organ.
Henry Wood did not live long enough to champion Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra so its first Proms airing came courtesy of the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Malcolm Sargent. Pierre Boulez, always an ardent Bartókian, gave the Concerto for Orchestra twice, in the Seventies. More recently it has featured as a showcase for distinguished American ensembles from Chicago (1981), Pittsburgh (1985) and Boston (2007), Salonen directing a reading very much in this tradition.
If undeniably brilliant, his interpretation did not always give the music sufficient space to breathe or find its Hungarian roots. The last three movements were run together. A bit more welly was required at salient points and for all that the youngsters gave it their all rigour shackled raw emotion. That said, the band’s dynamic range was impressively extended, the pianissimos real, the textures fine-spun. The jokes fell somewhat flat though. The ‘game of couples’ was a bit nippy for canoodling. For me there was also an issue in the ‘interrupted intermezzo’ where the trombone’s interjection was a very broad raspberry. Everything else felt straitjacketed, too taut. The finale risked the fastest possible tempo and, to be fair, brought the house down. The audience, of impressive size given the nature of the programme, was for the most part decently attentive, notwithstanding the presence of chronic coughers. But why are so many latecomers now admitted during the music? This is a misstep akin to the selling of popcorn in the bars.
At the very end came a bonus: more Stravinsky, albeit not announced as such. The ‘Galop’, a witty miniature orchestrated by the composer in 1921, is intended for small orchestra. Here it was turned into a showstopper with exaggerated sectional contrasts and a vulgarity not altogether present in the notes. Given the restraint of the rest one expected something subtler. Fun though!