Prom 27: BBC NOW/Wigglesworth at the Albert Hall

* * * * * (5 stars) 

There are many big orchestral beasts still to appear in this Proms season, but when the summer’s highlights are recalled this superlative performance of Elgar’s First Symphony by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Mark Wigglesworth will surely be near the top. It had everything.

Wigglesworth’s pacing was spot on. The first movement was expansive enough for Elgar’s profuse thickets of detail to be disclosed, yet never grandiose. The second movement was ferociously precise and pointed, the sublime adagio beautifully tranquil and the finale gradually more fervent until the big tune returned replete with what always reminds me of a 21-gun salute.

The orchestra rose fabulously to this epic challenge. The string sound in particular was rich and full in the loud bits and stunningly diaphanous during the hushed adagio ending. And Wigglesworth drew such lyrical playing for a work that can sound a little bombastic. His Wagner expertise certainly helped, but it was more about treating the symphony as a subtle personal document, not an Edwardian swagger.

Earlier, some real Wagner — though his early Das Liebesverbotoverture sounds a lot more like a preposterously frothy French operetta entr’acte than Parsifal. Much more substance came in William Mathias’s Violin Concerto, receiving its London premiere 23 years, incredibly, after the Welshman wrote it. Mathias knew he was dying when he composed it, and there’s certainly an “old man in a hurry” feel to the urgent, Shostakovich-like passagework, the asymmetrical rhythms and eerily sparse orchestral textures.

Even in the fizzing and seemingly exuberant finale there are astringent double-stoppings that hint at darker thoughts — though the heart of the work is surely the slow movement, suggesting some ancestral Welsh folksong twisting in the wind. The soloist, Matthew Trusler, superbly incisive and sinuous, proved to be an ideal champion for a work that doesn’t deserve its long neglect.