A late-night Prom can sometimes serve as a musical Rennie, a soothing digestif after 90 minutes of heavyweight orchestral fare. Fortunately, none was needed here. In the early evening programme John Storgårds kept the BBC Philharmonic sufficiently light on its feet, while Sueye Park made the most poetic of Proms debuts in Sibelius’s violin concerto, a cornerstone work she owned from start to finish.
If the opening wash of strings was barely audible over the whirr of the Royal Albert Hall air-con, it wasn’t long before the South Korean violinist grabbed our attention, her lean, silvery tone penetrating and intensely lyrical. In fact, Storgårds seemed to worry unnecessarily, keeping the orchestral volume on a low simmer for much of the work’s span. Park, an enthralling musical raconteur, imbued the first movement with a forthright romantic sweep before conjuring the kind of laser-focused, ethereal fireworks that set the finale dancing.
