Reinhold Glière is one of classical music's great, if questionable, entertainers. He has the unenviable reputation of being the Vicar of Bray of 20th-century Russian music, adapting his style, chameleon-like, to the fashions and governments of the day, and in the 1920s produced a number of works that became blueprints for socialist realism. His best-known piece, however, is Ilya Muromets, technically his third symphony, dating from 1911. Its first ever Proms performance, with Vassily Sinaisky conducting the BBC Philharmonic, was, without question, an extraordinary experience.

A cult work if ever there was one, Ilya Muromets deals with the eponymous hero of Russian legend, a 10th-century warrior and slayer of monsters in the area round Kiev, who eventually decides to take on the Armies of Heaven, at which point God turns him to stone. The score is a post-Romantic enormity written for vast forces, including what looks like an army of brass players and two enormous gongs. It is wildly eclectic, with strong overtones of Wagner, Strauss and Rimsky-Korsakov. Some of it sounds, however, like Firebird - a testament to Glière's originality, since he could not have known Stravinsky's ballet at the time of composition.

Sinaisky, grinning from ear to ear, conducted it with tangible pleasure, while the BBC Philharmonic had a field day with Glière's orgiastic sonorities.

Rachmaninov's Paganini Rhapsody and Pärt's Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten came before the interval. Nelson Goerner was the soloist in the Rachmaninov, a well-nigh perfect performance, witty, virtuosic and at times curiously sinister. Pärt's Cantus was intended as a tribute to the supposed "purity" of Britten's music. Britten's imagination, however, was anything but pure, and the work itself, beautifully done, if repetitive, seems oddly misguided.

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