“I’ve missed you,” Marin Alsop exclaimed to the Proms audience – and for the last three summers the Proms has missed her. She’s a natural here, playing off the curious informal grandeur the festival brings to this space each summer. Her orchestra, though, were Proms first-timers. Alsop took over as the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra’s music director in 2019, and their programme showcased a taut ensemble responsive to their conductor.
The frenetic opening of the suite from Bartók’s sleazy ballet The Miraculous Mandarin exemplified this, violins coursing, wind and brass snappy. Alsop didn’t overplay the music’s grotesqueries but instead concentrated on its rhythmic drive – something that also infused Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No 3, in which the soloist Benjamin Grosvenor assertively led the orchestra through the music’s carefree swagger. Or at least he seemed to: in reality this is a piece that demands tight teamwork if the pianist is going to sound like a star, and that’s what it got here, with Alsop maintaining a tick-tocking momentum throughout. Grosvenor’s encore, Ravel’s Jeux d’eau, was quite a contrast, but its liquid textures were underpinned by the same forensic precision of touch.
