Sir John Eliot Gardiner is, quite literally an inspiration. He breathes music into his players and singers with wondrous results. As someone said to me afterwards it would have been worth the ticket price just for the Conquassabit passage in Handel’s Dixit Dominus – with its dramatic announcement pause and then a whole series of superbly articulated, staccato entries. It was an edge of the seat moment. And Sir John achieves all this without fuss or flamboyance – just fluidity of the wrists, mouthing the words and the unfussy force of personality. This, astonishingly, was his 60th appearance at the Proms.

The concert began with Handel’s Donna, che in ciel, an early cantata probably written in 1707 for a thanksgiving service to mark Rome’s having escaped damage from the terrible 1703 earthquakes in central Italy. It was new to me, and I suspect, to many of the Proms audience. Scored for solo alto (Ann Hallenberg in this performance) and string orchestra it has some very memorable sections such as the simple but mesmerising Tu sei la bella. Hallenberg, who can scoop out wine-dark low notes as well as sailing gloriously through high ones, found drama, passion and excitement in the piece. Some of it went so fast – Sorga pure dall’irrodo averno, for instance - that it was almost like a Rossini patter song and I was struck, yet again, by the innate musicality of the Italian language. Handel contrasts these passages with lyrical legato ones and Hallenberg compelled you to pay attention to every note.

And then we turned to Bach for Christ lag in Todes Banden, This, like Donna, che in ciel, was written in 1707. With a neat parallel, both composers were 22 that year. As for the opening work, Eliot Gardiner had violas on the outside with cellos at 2 o’clock from the rostrum. After a momentarily ragged start we were bombarded with contrasts and ideas including some delightful chorus duets between different sections. The basses bringing warm passion to the long dark brown notes echoing out over the strings in Hier ist das rechte Osterlamm was a particular high spot.

After the interval Handel’s Dixit Dominus was much more familiar territory and the orchestra had moved round with second violins now on the outside and soloists emerging from within the ranks of the choir. It was a treat to hear it sung with such sensitivity and panache – anyone who’s ever tried to sing Dixit Dominus in, say, a local choral society will know just how difficult it is with so many subsections and rapid passages interspersed with lyricism (was Messiah already in Handel’s head?) but this performance was masterly.

Apart from the arresting Conquassabit moments to treasure included Julia Doyle and Emily Owen (and chorus) singing De Torrente in via bibet with such vibrant emotion that Eliot Gardiner gave it to us a second time as an encore in acknowledgement of the rapturous applause at the end.

On a trivial note, understated as Sir John Eliot Gardiner is, he clearly doesn’t mind a tiny touch of tasteful, theatrical fun. I loved the scarlet cuffs on his velvet jacket which moved, fell and caught the light as he conjured all that magic with his hands.

Susan Elkin

It’s a bold idea to intersperse Vivaldi’s early eighteenth century Italian take on the seasons with Piazzolla’s twentieth century Argentinian one. It makes you listen to, and hear both, with new ears. I rather liked it but I suspect it is a bit of a Marmite concept – especially as the four Vivaldi concerti were played in a very sparky, un-Baroque way – modern instruments, with a fair bit of vibrato, less cross string work than usual and percussive effects.

Joshua Bell’s interpretation of all eight pieces is far more collaborative than directorial. In the opening Vivaldi concerto (E major, La Primavera), for example, we heard some immaculately pointed duet and trio work with harpsichord, cello, violas and violin in an account which soared (and sawed) along with warm energy.

And – now transported to the sultry world of tango - I loved the mysteriousness of the gorgeous glissandi in the Piazzolla Summer in Buenos Aires and the glistening charisma of the cello solo (Caroline Dale) in Winter in Buenos Aires punctuated by Bell with, stroked-in off-beat harmonic notes. There was some fearsome playing in Piazzolla’s Spring in Buonos Aires too – a hot, full blooded sound with cat-like upward slides, col legno and bowing above the bridge for manic effect.

Joshua Bell has been Music Director of Academy of St Martin in the Fields since 2011 having worked with them since 1986. He clearly enjoys a warm relationship with the orchestra and told the audience at the end (before the encore – Gershwin’s Summertime arranged as a schmaltzy mini violin concerto) that he was deeply moved to be back with them after eighteen months of enforced deprivation. He wears his 53 years lightly, thick dark hair bouncing energetically in rhythm with his apparently rubber knees. It always seems awkward to me when a soloist leads from the front facing the audience because there are, perforce, lots of over-shoulder glances but it’s clearly an accustomed – and effective - way of working for these players.

The two works were presented as an interval-free single piece running 75 minutes in eight sections, alternating between Vivaldi and Piazzolla from the former’s Spring to the latter’s - and from the elegant natural sounds and colours of Italy three hundred years ago to the garish, noisy street life of South America much more recently It is widely thought that Piazzolla was inspired by Vivaldi and this performance leant heavily on the connection – with references in the music. In a concert which is not short of chuckles (the Pachelbel moment, for instance) there’s a good, almost Haydnesque, joke at the very end too. I won’t spoil it here – it’s available on BBC sounds for a month.

The Royal Albert Hall was fuller for this concert than I’ve seen it so far this season. Hurrah. We really are gradually getting back to normal.

Susan Elkin

Everything in this concert was beautifully played. First we had a warm, intelligent account of Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with Pavel Kolesnikov at the piano. Each and every one of the 24 variations was spelled out with sensitive attention to all those different styles especially in the pizzicato variation and the frenetic finale.

Then, eventually, we got magnificent performance of Firebird with every nuance lovingly leaned on. Because this is Aurora Orchestra (founded by Nicholas Collon in 2005) most of the players stood up for both works and the Stravinsky was played from memory which meant that players maintained continuous eye contact with the conductor and each other and that introduces a very unusual level of cohesion. Of course this is a narrative piece – it’s ballet music after all – and I have rarely heard the story telling so clear or so well articulated. The moment in this performance when the horn breaks in with that final haunting hymn-like tune will stay with me for a long time because Collon made it grow from the previous pianissimo passage like a flower bursting into bloom. The low level attempt at “staging” by altering the lighting, added nothing though. There was enough drama in the music. It needed no highlighting.

Having said all that though there were problems – at least as far I was concerned. The concert was introduced by Tom Service on stage. Now although I listen regularly to his informative Radio 3 programme The Listening Service and admire his fluent, knowledgeable enthusiasm, I don’t need Mr Service to tell me what I’m going to hear or to whip up applause with arm gestures like a pantomime character. I go to concerts for the music and really don’t care for any sort of chat in that context.

Moreover, In the middle of this concert we got a 20 minute musicology/music appreciation lesson – the sort of thing I associate with concerts for young audiences. It was well enough done in its way although I don’t relish being asked to hum. Service and Collon are an effective double act and Collon talked about Stravinsky’s use of intervals, illustrated by Aurora players quite interestingly. Orchestra members even sang a couple of songs which are part of the source material for Firebird. But you can get this sort of thing on the radio if you want it. In a concert hall I want music and in this case I would much preferred to have heard an extra work.

I also found myself irritated that in a concert billed as “no interval” audience members had to talk among themselves for 10 minutes while music stands and piano were taken off stage and various other bits of stage management were attended to. Several people, puzzled, tried to slip out and were turned back by staff.

It was, however, a good idea to run this concert twice. I attended the afternoon performance as part of a good sized audience. It was the later, evening performance which went out live on Radio 3.

Susan Elkin

Reshaping was the theme of this concert: Ralph Vaughan Williams reinventing Thomas Tallis, Respighi constructing a concerto based on plainchant and Mendelssohn responding to the Reformation, complete with protestant chorale. And it was noteworthy for another reason: Vasily Petrenko is RPO’s new Principal Conductor and this was his first concert in that role although he has, of course, conducted RPO many times before.

The opening Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis was glorious. The Royal Albert Hall acoustic and the distancing of the nine piece chamber orchestra on a higher level at the back ensured that every note and cadence sang with all the required wistful poignance. The musical rapport between them, the main orchestra and the string quartet at its heart ensured that we heard nuances that no recording ever captures.

Ottorino Respighi’s 1921 Concerto Gregoriano was new to me – and I expect to most of the audience. It gets few outings and this was its first performance at the Proms. It was also a Proms debut for diminutive Japanese violinist Sayaka Shoji who is 38 but looks two decades younger. It’s a substantial, ambitious work, often modal and inspired by Gregorian chant. Maybe Respighi tried to pack too much in because it feels pretty indigestible. Perhaps he should have taken the reshaping even further and made it into two concerti. Nonetheless Shoji seemed to play it with aplomb although I have no other performances to compare it with. I liked her beautiful sostenuto double stopping in the Andante and the intriguing passages in the finale when violin and timpani were centre stage (put me in mind of the much later Patricia Kopatchinskaja cadenza for the Beethoven concerto) and another nice bit with horns.

Mendelssohn’s D major symphony, ‘Reformation’ has never quite achieved the popularity of his earlier ones which is a pity because there are some splendid things in it – although it is arguably the most disjointed of Mendelssohn’s first five symphonies. Under Petrenko’s strange, fluid (is he double jointed?), octopus-like finger waving control the chorale ‘Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott’ was a delight and principal flautist Emer McDonough certainly deserved the applause Petrenko directed her way at the end. There was pleasing lightness from the woodwind in the Allegro vivace and admirable clarity and cohesion from the strings in the Andante. We got a deal of warmth and excitement too partly because of Petrenko’s ability to create – almost choreograph – the quietest possible piano and pianissimo passages.

Susan Elkin