I thought this was another splendid BBC Phil concert to follow Monday's - Sinaisky again showing his affinity for English music with a glorious In the South which really pointed up the Straussian points of the score. The RVW Piano Concerto is not a piece I know particularly well, but I enjoyed Ashley Wass' performance; the additions to the score of rain pelting onto the RAH roof plus threatening rumbles of thunder were particularly ill-timed, just at the moments of quiet solo piano, but, as Ruth said later, it seemed particularly apt for an English concerto to be accompanied by typical English summer weather!

The Rimsky was especially fine, prompting martle's discussions elsewhere about old warhorses. I'm sure I've heard Sinaisky do this before, but he gave the soloists plenty of time 'to breathe', especially at the opening to the second movement. I felt the flautist's phrasing was a bit unusual at times, not everything he tried paid off, but credit nonetheless. Yuri Torchinsky had a few pitching problems early on, but he played sensitively to articulate Scheherazade's story-telling. The timpanist had a fine time - smiling through most of the score and attempting concerto status for the instrument at times, such as the big tamtam crash at the climax of the final movement!

I look forward to hearing the views of other members, especially in regard to the Piano Concerto, which cannot be that well known, even by some of the folks here...

I thought the Piano Concerto a very weak piece indeed, with very little of interest for the soloist to do. Compared to other British PC's, it had a negligible amount to put across. For a long time I held a view that RVW was inclined to use parallel 5ths rather too often, and so I avoided his output. This has been challenged this season by such works as the 4th Symphony, but the PC justifies this view. The pentatonic scale was also far too over-used. I see this view is shared by some others at TOP, and I've only found one person who actually liked it.

I enjoyed it