Classical: Smudged tone pictures impair the vision

BBC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

ALBERT HALL, LONDON

WEDNESDAY'S EARLY-EVENING Prom began with Martinu's The Frescoes of Piero della Francesca, and ended with Debussy's La Mer. The BBC Symphony Orchestra, directed by its Principal Guest Conductor Jiri Belohlavek, gave firm, if plain, accounts of both pieces, suggesting that it was no more necessary to have viewed the frescoes at Arezzo to enjoy the former, than to have gone to sea to appreciate the latter.

Indeed, any connection between Martinu's glowing score of 1955 and the Renaissance master's serene visions seemed purely fortuitous. In each of the work's three movements, Martinu does what Martinu does best: placing memorable outbursts of Czech melody (themes would be too strong a word) between interludes of agreeably rambling music. Yet beneath it all there does lie a structure, something Belohlavek touched on with native eloquence. Here, as in the Debussy, the orchestra sounded insufficiently balanced to serve the cause of Impressionism shared by both composers. Brass were too weighty, and smitten with the presence of an intrusive trumpet. All the same, Belohlavek's La Mer was firmly controlled. Detail was lacking, but the symphonic heights and depths of the piece were all present, even if, as a whole, it sounded more like a chart for coastal navigation than the Turner or Hokusai of Debussy's dreams.

Previously, the orchestra and conductor had ended the concert's first half with Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, Frank Peter Zimmermann, the young German virtuoso, playing the solo part in a way that was sometimes pretty, yet also able to project the concerto's deeper meaning. At the opening, it seemed as if a curtain were drawn aside, so quietly restrained was his delivery. But this was a gamble to engage the ear more closely with the argument, for Zimmermann's sense of line and continuity never faltered, and his vision of the work encompassed its three linked movements. The poised and flowing Andante shifted to its more impassioned middle section with a raising of temperature well sustained by the orchestral strings. The finale was a delight, fulfilling the elfin sense of the first Allegro, but brought by Zimmermann to a triumphant close.

The world premiere of Berthold Goldschmidt's last work, his Deux Nocturnes, concluded a long tale of frustrated promise, neglect and late flowering that was the biography of this composer. Written in 1995-6, when he was in his early 90s, these songs belied no diminishing energies, but reflected a mind still youthful and strong. The soprano, Rosemary Hardy, well versed in new music, gave useful readings, though equally welcome would have been a voice more steeped in earlier German repertoire. For Pierre le Moyne's 16th-century verse for the first song, "Judith", Goldschmidt drew on his contrapuntal skills and unfailing command of the orchestra. The Biblical heroine's emotions were portrayed by means of a dialogue with her guardian angel prior to the murder of the enemy general Holofernes. More ethereal, "Rondel" was a surreal lullaby to words by Tristan Corbiere, where the textures strove upwards to the singer's conclusion, her highest note, before a whimsical yet valedictory coda.