Review: BBC Philharmonic *****

ReasonS to be cheerful number one: the BBC is only axing a couple of radio stations and bits of their website, so there will still be five orchestras and in particular there will still be the BBC Philharmonic.

Number two: there are still plenty of us that remember The Karelia Suite from This Week on ITV and enjoy the jaunty trumpet and trombone tune crisply played.

Number three: there are now plenty of musicians who have learned from the period instrument movement in a practical but non-doctrinaire way – like Ronald Brautigam.

His recordings of Beethoven sonatas on forte piano have been critically acclaimed but here he brought a wonderful lightness and clarity to the sometimes ponderous Emperor Concerto on a modern concert grand with

full orchestra.

Number four: guest conductors who can inspire and motivate an orchestra, particularly in a slightly specialist work like Nielsen's Fourth Symphony, because there is no doubt that John Storgrds

did inspire.

The tightness of the ensemble from the strings – the pizzicatos were wonderfully together; the lightness of the woodwind in the second movement; the duelling timpani, of course, and the towering return of the brass theme at the end all showed a world-class orchestra at the top of their game.