Berliner Akademie, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, <BR></BR>Prom 67, 68, Royal Albert Hall, London

Berliner Akademie, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

Occasionally an ensemble lifts you on to a whole new plane: the cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic; the Dresden or Chicago strings; Les Arts Florissants; or Paul McCreesh's Gabrieli Consort. Such a group is the Berlin Akademie fur Alte Musik. I first caught them live last year at Birmingham University; despite a capacious acoustic, they were magnificent. Here, gracing the South Bank's Ancestral Voices weekend and showing the QEH's chamber immediacy to stunning effect, they placed themselves firmly among the world's supreme artists.

It starts from the top. Their leader/director, Stephan Mai, a Simon Standage-plus, is a performer of character and brilliance. He tunes his players individually and energetically: like a soccer warm-up, it serves as a form of bonding (with the audience, too). Even his stylish curtain calls are symptomatic.

And how they coalesce! Not merely with Bach's C major Suite – staple diet, delivered with style, rhythmic certainty, light-stepped vitality and insightful aplomb – but in unknown fare, they sweep all before them. Take Christ-oph Nichelmann (1717-62), Bach's erstwhile boy soloist at Leipzig, whose Suite in B flat was composed, after studies with Quantz and Graun, as a calling card for Frederick the Great's court. It absorbs the best of Telemann, JS and CPE Bach and constitutes, virtually, another superbly imaginative Bach Suite.

So too the Harpsichord Concerto (magical, unassuming soloist Raphael Alpermann) and F major Sinfonia – another French Suite – by Bach's eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, which Mai riddles with mesmerising quadruple pianos. Not just the strings, but oboes (sometimes with viola) and bassoon excelled. Mai adds a tiny element of "give" before a phrase which makes it spring into life. JSB's Courante whirled past like a will-o'-the-wisp; both Gavottes, like the flight of a bumble-bee, punctuated by a burst of perfect, trumpeting upper string unison. A privilege to hear.

String unison – a sustained surge, as fresh as Mozart – buoyed up the New London Consort's second half, Vivaldi's Dixit Dominus, featuring spirited paired sopranos and a stylish alto solo (William Purefoy). Presumably Philip Pickett (the festival's artistic director) gave his team a soccer-style roasting at half-time: the first half – Vivaldi's dull "other" Gloria – from an ensemble that has so enhanced British post-Harnoncourt tradition felt (the orchestra apart) flat, flabby and feeble. Vivaldi was better rewarded by countertenor Artur Stefanowicz and cellist Richard Tunnicliffe: "Cor ingrato" from Pianti, Sospiri delighted in intonation, dramatic sense and accurate coloratura alike.

The South Bank Centre itself needed censuring too. Twice a hushed start in Richefort's post-Josquin Requiem was wrecked by invasive tannoys. Crass. Fortunately the Huelgas Ensemble, confirming the top-notch professionalism familiar from their recordings, continued as if galvanised afresh: the first motet ("Ne vous chaille, mon cuer"), a wonderfully-built Sanctus and the Offertorium (less so the Salve Regina) were out of this world. Conductor Paul van Nevel gave chief bow, deservedly, to Richafort himself (c1480-1547). His music, lauded by Rabelais and Ronsard, dotted with "false relations" and tinged with Cloth of Gold splendour, feels rather English: an easy match for Tye, Fayrfax and Cornyshe.

Roderic Dunnett

Prom 67, Royal Albert Hall, London

apparently Vaughan Williams once stated that Schoenberg meant nothing to him. So quite what he would have made of sharing a programme with Schoenberg and one of his disciples at one remove is anyone's guess. In fact the connection (if any) between the two halves of this Prom was so obscure that they might as well be regarded as two separate concerts. Schoenberg's "A Survivor from Warsaw" makes a very grim opening to any programme, and one that is difficult for any composer to follow up. Having said which, it received a deeply committed performance – particularly from Sanford Sylvan, who brought a singer's instinct to the unearthly "sprechstimme" narration.

The composer's characteristically brilliant orchestration shone forth, and the men of the chorus came in magnificently in that almost unbearable moment when the great hymn "Shema Yisroel" rises up above the horror. This is one piece in which for once the ugliness of serial technique fits the nightmarish subject like a glove. Alexander Goehr, however, seems nowadays to have relinquished his allegiance to 12-tone practice, per se. His new piece, modestly entitled "...second musical offering (GFH 2001)" was a curious reworking of some Handel.

Expressive string glissandi announced right at the outset there wasn't going to be any Baroque purism here, the overture section had a pervasive air of busyness about it, relieved by a very romantic slow section with nice mellow melodic lines and harp punctuations, and a slightly unexpected jazzy effusion from a flugelhorn. The "concerto" second half opened with arresting rhythms and stabbing strings, and later there was a romantic outburst from the cellos strangely reminiscent of the way they played Bach and Handel in the 1930s. Despite many felicitous moments, the impression was of an eminently tasteful, polite – even erudite – piece of work that somehow lacked an overall, compelling musical momentum; the sort of thing a professor of music might be expected to write. And did.

Then there was that other concert, which was a gloriously uplifting rendition of Vaughan Williams' heartwarming expression of optimism and faith in humanity, A Sea Symphony. The massive forces of BBC Symphony and Philharmonia Choruses made the most of the cataclysmic opening; Simon Keenlyside made a most gallant baritone seadog, while soprano Joan Rodgers soared most delightfully, still reaching down into the depths when required. "On the beach, at night alone" was atmospheric, and the chorus tackled the rather tricky word-setting of the scherzo with verve. Whitman's extraordinary cosmic vision sounded truly majestic in the slow introduction to the finale (with an almost extravagantly offstage semichorus), and Slatkin, to whose heart this work is evidently most dear, held together the disparate elements of this slightly rambling movement admirably.

The fading "O farther, farther sale" ending achieved a genuine "al niente", reminding us at the turn of another century how vital it is to look forward, and to hope.

Laurence Hughes

Prom 68, Royal Albert Hall, London

Christoph Eschenbach is the third pianist-turned-conductor to appear at the Proms recently. In the first of his two concerts with the Orchestre de Paris, of which he is musical director, he was a most attentive partner of the French pianist Heiene Grimaud in Beet-hoven's Fourth Piano Concerto. In the outer movements he had his eye on her hands for most of the time.

Grimaud is an unusually distinguished player in the mainstream Austro-German classics, with the gift of probing their depths and making them sound fresh. Her sound was brilliant yet always sensitively inflected, with a fondness, characteristic of her playing in general, for loosening the strands of textures to highlight particular notes, and always with a strong feeling for melodic line. After her short cadenza towards the end of the slow middle movement, in which she remained serenely unruffled by the orchestra's stern opposition, she played the top notes of two arpeggiated chords before spelling out the harmony, an unusual detail – and if that suggests a mannerism, it actually sounded natural. During the final movement Grimaud came close to pushing the tempo too hard, but discreetly corrected the tendency. This was a fine performance, strong and certainly not precious.

When Berlioz's "Symphonie fantastique" opened with a series of swooning phrases, it seemed we might be in for an eccentric interpretation. Conductors don't usually make so much of Berlioz's pauses. But they are clearly marked in the score, and this was typical of Eschenbach's attention to detail; and once the tempo picked up, so did the sense of flow. Rarely, too, are the horn parts so emphatically brought out in the first movement, but that was also no more than the score suggests. Berlioz had a terrific sense of scene-painting in this symphony and the Paris orchestra brought to it radiance as well as precision.

The evening had been overcast by the news from the United States and as a mark of respect for those who died, Eschenbach opened with the funeral march from Beethoven's "Eroica" Symphony, replacing the advertised Overture to "The Creatures of Prometheus". In the circumstances, perhaps, his rather slow tempo could be excused.

Adrian Jack