Prom 50: Hough/ BBC SO/Vedernikov, Prom 51: Montero/Sao Paulo SO/Alsop, review: 'Customary brilliance'

Alexander Vedernikov makes his Proms debut on the podium

Pianist Gabriela Montero performs Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor with the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop at the BBC Proms 2016 (BBC/Mark Allan)

With Alexander Vedernikov making his Proms debut on the podium, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra on fine form, Stephen Hough sailed through Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with his customary brilliance.

Vedernikov’s sensitive conducting allowed every note from the piano to impinge delicately; Hough’s virtuosity was consummate, yet casual-seeming. And his responses to the mood-shifts in the score were subtly graded, darkening the tone for the ‘Dies Irae’ variation, and finding a gentle expansiveness when the work’s great lyrical tune came into view. His encore was a typical Hough joke, letting us think we were about to hear Rach Three, then seguing into an arrangement of ‘Moscow Nights’.

Hough is a debonair English gent; Gabriela Montero is a Venezuelan ball of fire, whose furious opposition to her country’s government has led to her exile in Spain. Supported by the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra under Marin Alsop’s direction, she extracted more downhome sweetness from the lyrical parts of Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor than I have heard in a long time, but her attack was still tigerish when required. For an encore she played her usual trick, inviting a tune from the audience – how convenient! – ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, which she transmuted first into Bach, then into Scott Joplin.