The fallout continues for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. A year ago, its management cancelled a concert by the pianist Jayson Gillham because of comments he made from the stage condemning the targeting of journalists in Gaza. Despite changes in management, Gillham’s case is still set to go to court – and the MSO remains a target for protest.
This was the second ever Prom for the MSO, and twice it was brought to a halt by shouts from the balcony, where the Jewish Artists for Palestine group unfurled banners. The first time, the conductor Jaime Martín went off stage, then returned and started from the top; the second, he immediately resumed where they had left off. If anything it felt a little unfair that the piece disrupted should have been by Haunted Hills by the Australian composer Margaret Sutherland. With loping, almost balletic melodies dragging the ominous weight of tuba and other brass, this muscular 1950 tone poem evokes both the unchanging landscape and what Sutherland called the betrayal of Indigenous people by settlers. Her music still awaits an undisrupted Proms premiere.
Next, in theory, was Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No 1, with Khatia Buniatishvili as soloist. The stage was rearranged, the piano wheeled out – and, a few minutes later, wheeled back again. Buniatishvili was understandably rattled, and so Dvořák’s Symphony No 6 would be played first.
It’s a buoyant symphony and, as the performance unfolded unchallenged, it sounded all the more so. Yet while there were some lovely touches – the glassy violins and perky flutes as the first movement turned back towards the light; the rustic piccolo singing out in relief to the almost aggressive main dance theme of the third movement – the balance still felt weighted towards the brass, with the strings silky yet a little reticent.
Buniatishvili finally took the stage after the interval, and with Martín in attentive support she gave a performance of almost relentless drive, bringing out the skittishness and spikiness behind this work’s grandeur. Her encore was JS Bach’s version of an adagio for oboe by Marcello, its melody highly decorated but introverted, played almost as if she were alone. A long silence followed: the end of a highly charged evening.
• Listen again on BBC Sounds until 12 October. The Proms continue until 13 September.
