David Robertson is best known to UK audiences as the BBC Symphony Orchestra's principal guest conductor. Since 2005, however, he has also been music director of the St Louis Symphony, which he brought to London for their Proms debut ahead of a major European tour. They're a fine ensemble, with a clean, sinewy sound, and a mellower brass section than some US orchestras. The Robertson mix of panache and refinement is very apparent in their style.
The first half of the concert, however, had its share of problems. Brahms's craggy Tragic Overture suits the SLS sound extremely well. Yet once past an arresting account of the opening, the orchestra seemed unable to sustain its turbulent mood. Their performance of Beethoven's Violin Concerto that followed, meanwhile, had its curious moments. Swift speeds put paid to the reverential awe that can creep into the work, though some of the slow movement's poetry slipped in the process. The soloist was Christian Tetzlaff, sweet-toned and technically immaculate, but playing for the most part extremely quietly, while Robertson held the orchestra back: the overall effect, oddly, was not of a small-scale performance but of large forces not letting rip when you felt they could.
Things settled after the interval. Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces Op 16 combined textural clarity with emotional extremism in ways that reminded us just how much they still have the power to surprise and even shock. Astonishingly, the SLS's performance of Gershwin's An American in Paris was the first by a US orchestra at the Proms, and they played it with bags of style and just the right mix of wonder and sleaze. The encore was the overture to Bernstein's Candide, jaw-droppingly virtuosic and terrific fun.
• Available to listen again on iPlayer until 11 September. 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
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