"It's a monster - but one of the best," is how pianist Yefim Bronfman described Brahms's Second Piano Concerto, the opening work in Simon Rattle's second Prom with the Berlin Philharmonic. "I'm not sure you can ever truly know it," he added, acknowledging, perhaps, that no single interpretation can capture every facet of this enormous masterpiece.
The shapely gravitas of Bronfman's playing suited it admirably, though on this occasion he took a few minutes to settle. Weight and scale were established at the outset. The poetry, however, seemed to work its way in as the first movement progressed. Rattle's Brahms is finessed and nuanced, and there were rapturous string climaxes and finely honed orchestral solos. The finale was expansively genial, though it's the dark urgency of Bronfman's playing in the Scherzo and his intense treatment of the slow movement that will linger most in the memory.
Its companion piece was Lutosławski's Third Symphony, another massive musical statement, the resonances of which run deep. Completed in 1983, it is often regarded as an expression of sympathy with Solidarity in protest at the imposition of martial law in Poland. Written in one continuous movement, the score contrasts closely wrought threnodies with aleatoric passages in which groups of instrumentalists freely play short thematic phrases with minimal intervention from the conductor. Beethoven's Fifth, itself associated with liberation, lurks, meanwhile, behind the angry four-note theme that binds the work together.
It benefits immensely from Rattle's trademark clarity and the Berlin Philharmonic's incisive playing, which confer tremendous lucidity on what, to me, has until now been a forbidding work, without losing sight of its innate power. When it was over, one of Dvořák's Slavonic Dances formed a brief encore, which Rattle dedicated "to the greatest audience in the world".
• If you're at any Prom this summer, tweet your thoughts about it to @guardianmusic using the hashtag #proms and we'll pull what you've got to say into one of our weekly roundups – or leave your comments below.
