With this appearance at the proms, and two concerts at the Barbican in a fortnight’s time with the orchestra of the Bavarian State Opera, Vladimir Jurowski is giving London audiences another reminder of what they have been missing since he stepped down as principal conductor of the London Philharmonic two years ago. He has been in charge of the Berlin Radio Symphony (Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin) since 2017, and although in the pecking order of the German capital’s orchestras it would probably rank behind the Berlin Philharmonic and the Staatskapelle, on the evidence of this concert it is a very fine band indeed.
Jurowski began with a suite from a work that had received its first performance exactly 95 years earlier. Kurt Weill’s Kleine Dreigroschenmusik (“Little Threepenny Music”) is a suite of eight movements that Weill extracted from his score for Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera, using the same raw-edged wind-based pit band as the original “play with music”. With the help of some suitably louche solo playing from the trumpet, trombone and saxophone particularly, Jurowski conjured the brittle, sardonic world of Berlin in the days of the Weimar Republic with cool precision. His handling of the tumbling, teeming textures that surround the solo lines in Thomas Adès’s Piano Concerto was equally attentive, though, as so often, radio listeners will have got a better appreciation of the work’s intricate detailing than we had in the hall itself.
Kirill Gerstein was the concerto soloist – as he had been when the London Philharmonic gave its UK premiere in 2019, with the composer conducting. His playing of what often seems like a tongue-in-cheek potted history of the form was wonderfully precise and suitably rumbustious, but if the work has the deeper, more profound core than is hinted at in its dark-toned slow movement, then he has yet to reveal it fully.
Gerstein’s encore, his own transcription of a song by Rachmaninov, neatly linked the faux romanticism of Adès’s concerto and the work after the interval. Rachmaninov’s Third Symphony was the chance for the BRSO to display its svelter qualities, with the strings adding just a hint of portamento to the more succulent melodic lines, and the woodwind shaping every solo with perfect elegance. Typically, Jurowski kept the work on a tight expressive rein, while ensuring everything was perfectly shaped and had just the right amount of dash and flair.
• Available on BBC Sounds until 9 October. The Proms continue until 9 September
