Easy listening on the South Bank

I booked this concert five months ago. I was a little surprised when I checked the programme that it was so familiar. It was the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra - possibly London's most populist band, under a conductor I had not heard of - Matthias Bamert. The concert, to be broadcast on 11 October, went under the Listen Up! banner.

Indeed, it started with the Listen Up! fanfare, specially composed by Gareth Wood, RPOdouble bass player. It was nice little fanfare - nothing special. Then they went straight into the first main piece, Sibelius's Finlandia, which rather confused the stewards, who were trying to sit latecomers as the music began.

Finlandia is not a long piece but manages to combine both bombast and lyricism, with a main theme that I really like.

Next up was Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, with Tasmin Little. It's a piece that i do really like, but I'm not sure that I heard anything in it that I hadn't previously heard. I was impressed by her technical flair. And there is not a great deal to say about it. It's very listenable-to, even though it hasn't the inyerface melody that a Mozart or Beethoven would offer. Very many violinists have recorded this. I have a version with Nigel Kennedy, which I like very much - although not quite as much as Amazon's biased reviewer...! . I note that EMI have Yehudi Menuhin in their Great Recordings of the Century series - I don't think you can go wrong with that!

After the interval was the highlight of the concert. Surprisingly, actually. Holst's Planets. I have heard this piece so many times, over so very many years, that I thought I was entirely familiar with it. But I was hearing things in it I have never heard before. I will take my hat off this conductor, whom I have never even previously heard of - he did this work proud. Mars was precise and clipped, thus adding to the doom-laden throbs of war. Mercury sounded like dance music, Jupiter was as good as I have ever heard it; for the first time I really heard the beauty in Saturn; and Uranus was splendid, loud, raucous. I applauded long and loud - this was a special Planets for me, yet I actually thought I had Planets-fatigue. It's so fab when you can hear an oh so familiar piece but hear it so differently.