Review: BBC PROMS: MENDELSSOHN'S VIOLIN CONCERTO, Royal Albert Hall

From the moment the first note rang out, this was no ordinary Proms night. Four wildly different pieces, one restless thread: mischief. Mendelssohn is the marquee name here but really this was a foray into the world of fairytale birds, lyrical longing, mythological monkeys and death-defying pranksters.

Finnish conductor Sakari Oramo has been the chief baton-wielder with the BBC Symphony Orchestra since the beginning of the 2013 Proms season and, a dozen years on, he feels welded to this role. Accompanying him for this concert was the Italian-German-American violinist Augustin Hadelich, the fresh-faced musician who grew up on a family farm before going on to win a Grammy and becoming one of classical music's rising stars.

Opening with "The Song of the Nightingale" was a smart move. It’s a piece that’s all surface – but oh, what a surface. It comes from Stravinsky's 1914 opera Le Rossignol in which a cruel Chinese emperor is humbled to tears by a small grey bird; in much the same way, the intense spark and sparkle of the melodies shrunk the grandeur of the immense auditorium into something akin to as an intimate experience as one can have in the Royal Albert Hall.  

Oramo kept a tight leash on the orchestra’s fireworks, letting the colours flash without blinding us, the tuba adding dramatic ballast before the french horns cut through the violin's plaintive pleading.

After the amuse bouche (if it can be called that) came the pivot to the main course. Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto – and with it, an emotional gear-shift so smooth it felt almost cinematic. After the more downbeat Nightingale, Hadelich brought real fire to the opening. This was Mendelssohn with backbone. The slow movement? Intimate, poised, and heartbreakingly direct. And the finale was a marvel: light on its feet, but with grit in the bowing that gave it bite as well as bounce.

Anthony Davis’s "Tales (Tails) of the Signifying Monkey" is a work that doesn’t just cross boundaries – it demolishes them with a grin and a raised eyebrow. Making its European debut almost thirty years after it was written, this short piece places central the idea of the monkey as the jungle trickster, outwitting the stronger lion. A syncopated trombone ostinato starts off proceedings before the bassoons kick in and the French horns introduce themselves. Cellos and bass clarinets evoke the ocean and there's a blues shuffle to round things off. At only fifteen minutes, it doesn't outstay its welcome.

Richard Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel could have felt like dessert after a heavy main course, but this was no soufflé. This was Strauss with swagger. Oramo leaned into the prankster’s darker edges, making Till less of a clown and more of a clever, doomed antihero. He confidently takes us along for just quarter of an hour on this briefest of biographies - one minute flirting with women and annoying the academics, the next facing up to a death sentence. The horn calls were cheeky, the woodwinds sparkled, and that final descent into silence? Genuinely chilling.

It’s rare to see a concert programme this bold and this characterful pulled off with such conviction. From glittering fairy-tales to urban folklore, this was a night where classical music shook off its suit and had some serious fun.

The Proms season continues until13 September

Fanny, a comedy about Mendelssohn's sister, opens at the King's Head Theatre in October.