Proms 2017, review: BBCSO / Oramo

​A dying man’s wishes are not to be trifled with. And Elgar made it clear on his deathbed that he didn’t want anybody tinkering with the sketches he’d made for a Third Symphony.

With the eventual consent of the Elgar family, Anthony Payne, an authoritative Elgarian and distinguished composer himself, worked over a number of years on an “elaboration” of those 130 pages of sketches. No one could have done the job more sympathetically, as was evident on encountering the work again nearly twenty years after its first performances.

If some passages, including the austere opening, still take one by surprise, there are others that could have come from Elgar’s own pen – as up to a point they do. The elegiac Adagio goes to the heart of the matter and many paragraphs here bear the authentic Elgarian stamp. These were generally the ones that shone out in this reading by Sakari Oramo with the BBCSO. Elsewhere, much seemed routine rather than truly inspirational.

The same could be said of the rarely heard Scènes Historiques by Sibelius, of which the first suite opened the programme. The Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor that followed brings together pseudo-Bachian counterpoint, Lisztian display and Gallic glitter. Javier Perianes was an adroit soloist and cannot be blamed if emotional depths remained unplumbed.

The BBC Proms (bbc.co.uk/proms) continue until Sept 9