The international heavyweights have been coming thick and fast as this year’s BBC Proms hurtles towards its close. The Munich Philharmonic arrived with new chief conductor Lahav Shani hot on the heels of two acclaimed concerts from their Berlin counterparts. Once conducted by Gustav Mahler and Wilhelm Furtwängler, the Munich Phil is an unequivocally venerable orchestra. But the Berliners remain a hard act to follow. The opening gestures of Farrenc’s Overture No 2 were scrappy and the strings struggled to blend despite Shani’s energetic leadership, conducting without a score or baton throughout the concert.
But I suspect most of the capacity crowd hadn’t scrambled for tickets specifically to hear this orchestra. Instead the prom’s big draw was legendary 85-year-old pianist Martha Argerich, whose appearance on stage for Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 2 prompted gales of whooping. After the concerto she was repeatedly called back by audience stamping until she sat back down (to another wave of applause), this time alongside Shani. Their encore, The Fairy Garden from Ravel’s Mother Goose suite, was oddly wooden, only occasionally illuminated by Argerich’s right-hand filigree, skimming the keyboard in delicate glissandos.
