BBC Proms, Cadogan Hall, Royal Albert Hall

It is almost 70 years since a fateful night in 1941 when the Queen’s Hall was destroyed in the Blitz. The Proms were hastily moved to the Royal Albert Hall, where they have remained, but the search to find a smaller venue for chamber music has only recently been solved with the expansion at Cadogan Hall.

This year’s Saturday matinees are continuing to extend their range. The recital last weekend focused on Schumann, complementing the bicentenary offerings of the main evening Proms by taking a sideways look at the composer from a modern viewpoint. Robin Holloway’s Fantasy-Pieces, written in 1971, wrap a performance of Schumann’s Liederkreis Op.24 in a series of instrumental fantasies that lift some of Schumann’s ideas and take them on a journey of the imagination. Tenor Toby Spence sang a sharply intense performance of the song-cycle and then players from the Nash Ensemble conducted by Edward Gardner sent the music spinning off into other directions, with echoes of Wagner, Strauss and jazz. This is no dry academic exercise. Holloway’s success is that he uses Schumann fragments to probe new depths of emotion. A bracing performance of Schumann’s Piano Quartet in E flat ended the afternoon.

The evening concert on Saturday accorded the Minnesota Orchestra the honour of giving the annual Proms performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No 9. Since Osmo Vänskä arrived as music director in Minneapolis he has stamped his very individual style on the orchestra generally and on the Beethoven symphonies, through their recordings together, in particular. A remarkably delicate performance of Berg’s Violin Concerto, with Gil Shaham as soloist, set the scene for the Ninth Symphony. Even period instrument performances of Beethoven have not had a clarity and energy more extreme than this. With the orchestral sound stripped back to a wiry skeleton, Vänskä gave a headlong performance that did not pause even to catch its breath. The 2010 Beethoven’s Ninth will surely go down as one of the most controversial of all, sometimes irritating – the rigidity, the lack of warmth, the prissiness – but always, like hitting 100 miles per hour with a supremely confident driver, an exciting experience. (