He never permitted this work’s honeyed lyricism to turn to mush. Bell’s were emphatically not the wrong hands. Saint-Saëns’s concerto, written in 1880 for the Spanish celebrity virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate, also abounds in a tuneful charm that might, in the wrong hands, cloy. This teenager’s jeu d’esprit (the prodigy was 17) revels in elegant inventiveness as well as ripe jokes.
The fairy strings of Mendelssohn bounced and skittered, the dreamlike woodwinds of the opening chords felt suitably otherworldly, while Bottom’s braying tuba-ass sounded droll but not crude. The Academy makes up in agility what it potentially lacks in weight. If all this movement sounds like hyper-active distraction, then the evidence of the ears argued that no one had lost their concentration. As standing soloist in Saint-Saëns’s Third Violin Concerto, Bell would face the audience for his star turns, but then twist or swerve around to lead the band. Periodically, it reared up like a rampant unicorn or a submarine periscope, calling out across the stage to guide woods or brass. For Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture, the Bridge and the Beethoven, Bell played as leader while – when the orchestration allowed – simultaneously wielding the bow of his Stradivarius as a baton. It takes a long, close rapport with an ensemble to sound as briskly coherent and responsive as they do without a specialist stick-wielder up front. Following in founder Sir Neville Marriner’s big but always nimble shoes, Bell has led the ASMF since 2011. But the spirit and style of Bell and his band made this a feel-good session to prove that musicians of this quality can delight a crowd without patronising populism.įew in the hall, I’m confident in claiming, would have missed a conductor. Other Proms this season may offer more in the way in innovation and transformation. But Bell, who directs his tight-knit and bright-toned 40-strong forces from the leader’s desk, generated an excitement that banished any hints of tea-time torpor. This Sunday afternoon concert, packed with families, could have offered little more than a pleasant easy-listening stroll in (or at least beside) the park. An outfit as taut, lithe and exhilarating as the ASMF and their ever-youthful American director have no need of stunts. Still (literally, in this case) – do give us a break. Yes, smart programming draws attention to the hidden kinship that binds seemingly disparate pieces across periods and styles. Some alert applauders broke the thread, which meant that we never quite heard if the join would hold firm. Just a couple of days after Antonio Pappano ran Haydn into Bernstein without pausing for breath, Joshua Bell and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields sought to splice the final yearning notes of Frank Bridge’s Lament to the spooky short adagio that opens Beethoven’s Fourth.
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