Zubin Mehta is one of the outstanding conductors of our time, yet over the last two decades he has become an increasingly rare visitor to London. He last appeared at the Proms in 2011, and his return was warmly received. With it came the Proms debut of a rather special orchestra; founded 12 years ago, the Australian World Orchestra brings together expatriate Australian musicians from all over the globe to work alongside their home-based colleagues. The lineup for its current tour includes players from across the northern hemisphere, from San Francisco to Hong Kong, who meld into a remarkably flexible ensemble.
Mehta clearly brings the best from them too. He has always been a superb interpreter of the Second Viennese School, and he began this concert with two works by Webern, the Passacaglia Op 1 and the Six Pieces for Orchestra Op 6, the more manageable 1928 revision rather than the original gargantuan version. His stormy account of the passacaglia, unmistakably expressionist, found echoes in the climaxes of the orchestral pieces, in the snarling brass of the second and the final outburst of grief in the funeral-march fourth, while the AWO’s outstanding woodwind (hard to identify individually, as the programme listed the players alphabetically by section) made every melodic shard count.
