THE PROMS / Words to the wise: Anthony Payne on Stravinsky's Persephone, Ravel's Mother Goose and Poulenc's Organ Concerto

MANY would classify Ravel as a late- or perhaps a post-Romantic composer, yet the profoundly affecting vision of a work like the suite Mother Goose, which was beautifully performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under David Atherton in Wednesday evening's Prom, has at least as much to do with the restraint and well-honed surfaces we associate with classical utterance.

The child-like innocence that Ravel brings to the work's fairy-tale tableaux allows a poignant and deeply felt expressiveness to be released, but no element of personal revelation such as we find in the post-Freudian world of Mahler's childhood allusions is allowed to colour the purity of the experience.

There are many subtle resonances and layers of meaning in Ravel's world, and they were precisely caught in Atherton's deceptively simple reading: the calm sense of aura he brought to the Eastern mechanisms of the 'Empress of the Pagodas' and the deliberate pacing of the final 'Fairy Garden' created an entrancing world of feeling, while the orchestra achieved considerable finesse, combining clarity of texture with an impressive sense of soft and hard focus.

Paradoxically the more overt neo-Classicism of Poulenc's Organ Concerto seems to stem from a Romantic sensibility. It is a work which the composer himself placed on the fringes of the religious choral music with which he was becoming preoccupied at the time, and its Baroque mannerisms adopted with palpable sincerity suggest a very personalised world of prayerful anxiety and introspection. The apparently lighter moments merely place that experience in a surreal context.

The textural problems that Poulenc posed in his scoring for strings and timpani are not always as well-solved as they were on this occasion by soloist Simon Preston and the orchestra, and the sharp rhythmic attack and strongly differentiated sonorities they created brought the concerto's unpretentious confessions into clear focus.

The main event of the evening, however, was a rare performance of Stravinsky's problematic but often ravishingly beautiful Persephone, a repetition in effect of the interpretation given by the same forces 18 months ago in the Festival Hall.

It made a strong impression then as it did on this occasion under Atherton's guiding hand. Stravinsky described the piece as a melodrama for tenor, choir and orchestra, conveniently omitting from the title the one element in the texture which has often been judged unsatisfactory, the extensive narration for speaking voice. One sometimes wonders whether commentators would have been so quick to find fault if the composer himself had not shown them the way by admitting a certain dissatisfaction. 'Sins cannot be undone, only forgiven,' he declared.

The part was spoken on this occasion by Laurence Bouvard, and she summoned a touchingly heightened expression which went a long way towards integrating the text into the overall fabric of the work. At the same time the choruses, which have always found critical favour, were delivered by the BBC Singers and Symphony Chorus with a coolly controlled beauty, and their stately classical progress tinged with some oddly Russian turns of phrase created a richly allusive, floating lyricism.

It was this very quality of lyricism that seemed to be missing in John Aler's singing of the part of Eumolpus, and his tenor line often seemed to be forced, perhaps in response to the Albert Hall's big spaces.

In sum, however, the work's complex tapestry of sound made a profound impression, and the audience responded with enthusiasm.