The centrepiece of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra’s Prom with their chief conductor Lahav Shani was a performance of Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto quite unlike any other. Shani, like his mentor Daniel Barenboim, is a wonderful pianist as well as a conductor, and in this instance played the concerto himself, directing his orchestra from the keyboard. It’s a familiar enough practice of course, in Mozart and Beethoven, though some might consider it foolhardy applied to Prokofiev, whose piano writing is nothing if not exactingly athletic, and who also demands orchestral playing and conducting of almost clockwork precision.
It proved, however, to be a tour de force that bordered on staggering. The devil-may-care brilliance and impertinent charm of Shani’s pianism suit Prokofiev down to the ground for starters, and you couldn’t help but be struck by the disarming dexterity of his way with those driven, helter-skelter allegros, or the airy grace with which he launched the slow movement’s almost balletic variations. Sweeping arm gestures in passages when the piano is silent controlled tempo and expression, but most of the time we were acutely aware of the orchestra’s intense focus on watching and listening to each other as well as to him. The whole thing was real edge-of-your-seat stuff as ensemble and balance risked coming apart at any moment. But they never did, and the end result was thrilling beyond belief.
The rest of the programme consisted of 20th-century French music, where the finesse of Shani’s conducting (he is extraordinarily elegant on the podium) and the detailed beauty of the Rotterdam orchestra’s playing spoke volumes. Lili Boulanger’s D’Un Soir Triste, unsettling in its awareness of encroaching mortality, was all sombre, brooding intensity. Shani took Debussy’s La Mer more slowly than some interpreters, lingering over the score’s sensuous beauty, without losing sight of tension or momentum, and the effect was simply ravishing. Ravel’s La Valse brought the concert to a close with its dark yet alluring intimations of decline and eventual destruction. The string tone sounded at times so sensual as to be decadent. Woodwind and brass alternately seduced and glared. And the ending, as rhythm and music itself finally seem to implode, was terrifying.
• On BBC Sounds. The BBC Proms continue until 14 September
