Taking the big-shot orchestra slot in the final week of the Proms, the Vienna Philharmonic proved its credentials in two concerts covering the staging posts from classical to modernist. The conductor Franz Welser-Möst barely needed to break a sweat to draw out impeccably polished string sound and top-notch wind and brass solos. No surprises there. But might a few surprises, a few experiments, have made it more memorable?
For all the pleasures of these performances, the cumulative effect was of safety and good taste – words not usually applied to Berg’s Lulu Suite, three movements of which began the first concert. The strings and flute sent their tendrils out tenderly and silkily; the blend when the rest joined in was seamless. The intrusion of low brass near the end of the first movement and a moment of barrel-organ brightness in the second briefly ruffled the surface, but you wouldn’t have guessed the anguish of the Lulu story from this.
