Proms 2013: BBC Symphony Orchestra, review The Proms have been overwhelming in recent days; grand mythic masterpieces, played to ecstatic houses in electric performances. It's part of the nature of that vast hall that it suits extremes. Either the grandest or the most intimate things work wonderfully well. Thursday's Prom offered something at the middle ground; subtle experiences, with unfamiliar music, much of it speaking in a quiet voice. The conductor Oliver Knussen put together a typically intelligent programme of 20th century music, with two large-scale, visionary works enclosing two piano concertos by Stravinsky, both precise and hard as diamonds. Things began with Hans Werner Henze's Barcarola of 1979. The title promised something sunny and Mediterranean, and here and there one caught little flecks of Italianate melody, beautifully played by the woodwinds. But really this was another of Henze's anguished meditations on his own German identity, in the guise of a memorial piece for the East German composer Paul Dessau. At one point we even heard the single most pain-wracked chord from Wagner's Tristan. It was overwhelming in the moment, but as often happens with Henze, it seemed like a mirage as soon as it was over. The final piece, Michael Tippett's 2nd Symphony, seemed so very innocent in comparison, with its drowsy pastoral idyll in the slow movement, and faint echoes of Elizabethan dances in the Scherzo. Knussen directed the piece with his usual care, but its effect seemed muffled, the delicate tracery of harp and piano lost in that huge space. The Prom's tough kernel, constituted by the two Stravinsky concertos, needed to be clear as a bell to make their effect. But they were also vulnerable to the Albert Hall effect, which may be why Knussen and the pianist Peter Serkin decided to take them at such a deliberate pace. The Concerto for Piano and Winds is tricky anyway, its heavily dignified brass and wind processionals always liable to overwhelm the piano. This performance lacked the brittle hard-edged brilliance we're usually treated to, and the balance went awry at times. But it had a meditative, beautifully "turned" quality, which for me restored the heart to a piece that can seem heartless. Movements of 1959 was a whole world away, its abstract assemblage of lines and points showing Stravinsky was well able to keep up with the 1950s avant-garde. Again the performance brought out the work's meditative qualities, as well as its balletic grace. Hear this Prom on the BBC iPlayer until August 7