The Orchestra Upstages Its Guest: BBCSO Reminds London Why It Shouldn't Be Taken for Granted

Inmo Yang played Bartók beautifully, but Oramo's BBC Symphony stole the night. A concert review that doubles as a corrective to London's habit of overlooking its own.

Inmo Yang is the kind of violinist critics reach for superlatives to describe, and mostly those superlatives are earned. His opening paragraph of Bartók's Violin Concerto No. 1 — a long, winding statement for solo violin — arrived with exactly the poise and suppleness his reputation promises. The tone was sweet, tender, almost retro in its lyricism. He is, without question, still on the rise. But here's the thing: Yang played the concerto in cursive. Lovely, immaculate cursive — and nothing else. The performance was monochromatic in its earnestness. Every phrase was beautiful; none of them bit. Humour, darkness, the sudden flash of something feral — these came not from Yang but from the orchestra behind him. Oramo's brass flurries, the bright harp pinpricks, the deliciously unbuttoned rustic string playing: these were the charismatic moments in a concerto that has plenty of room for them. The BBCSO stealing the limelight from a headline soloist is not an accident — it is, in fact, the story of the whole evening. When Yang left the stage, the orchestra had still more room, and used it. The Brahms First Symphony under Oramo was gleamingly translucent: contrabassoon and double basses audible at the bottom end in ways that rarely happen, woodwind solos sculpted, the string pizzicato at the finale's opening landing with the kind of precision that stops an audience cold. The opener, Enescu's Romanian Rhapsody No. 1, was a different animal entirely — which is to say, Oramo was visibly possessed. The review's description of his conducting manner is worth quoting in full: head bobs and hip wiggles, arms whirling like windscreen wipers in a downpour, hands rippling like jellyfish, nursery-school marching shading into full air traffic control. This is a conductor who commits. The music matched the gesture: ultra-lush strings one moment, tipsy village band the next, trumpets sounding as if they'd escaped from a local big top. Ten minutes of kitsch, and absolutely correct. The BBCSO is one of those institutions the British classical music ecosystem depends on while mostly forgetting to notice. Evenings like this are worth marking not just as good concerts but as evidence of what a fully resourced, long-tenured chief conductor relationship looks like when it's firing. Oramo has been with the orchestra since 2013. That shows — not in familiarity's comfort but in the ability to take risks together. The Bartók rubato, the Brahms transparency, the Enescu abandon: these are choices you make when you trust each other.