Performer: John Lill

Tchaikovsky’s warhorse piano concerto is given a performance stripped of all showmanship. Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra completes this oddly programmed concert from the RLPO.

The RPO were on ripe form in works that still need such fine advocacy, and which deserved a much larger audience.

This Anvil concert revealed a “two sides of the same coin” quality from an illustrious orchestra that left a mixed, but mostly favourable impression.

A programme steeped in the cultural experience of 20th-century Russia offered intrigue, thrills and a surprising dash of humour.

This concert, given by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under Cristian Măcelaru, was a great start to the new year! 

The joy of listening to Brahms’s piano concertos in a concert hall – especially one with such fine acoustics as St David’s Hall, Cardiff – is that textures and harmonies that can sound thick, muddy and ill-balanced in recordings come across with all their intricate, closely-woven contrapuntal writing clear and thrilling.