Prom 18: BBC Symphony Orchestra, James Gaffigan, Royal Albert Hall, London, review: Not a lot of variety on offer

James Gaffigan and the BBC Symphony Orchestra didn’t pull of their ocean-themed concert

James Gaffigan (above) and the BBC Symphony Orchestra performed 'Prom 18' at the Royal Albert Hall

Themed concerts always seem like a good idea. To follow the sea through its many musical moods in three contrasting works sounds like a brilliant way to spend an evening, but unfortunately wasn’t quite what we got here.

The fault was one of programming. Despite the best efforts of young American conductor James Gaffigan, who galvanised the BBCSO into supple and colourful action, there was no getting away from the fact that there wasn’t a lot of variety on offer. Korngold’s sweeping score for 1940’s classic The Sea Hawk set us off in a filmic vein that we never quite shook off. By the end of the concert you had sense of having sat through a soundtrack without the visuals – a pleasant, but oddly incomplete experience.

Anders Hillborg’s Sirens – a large-scale work for chorus, orchestra and soprano soloists, heard here in its UK premiere – offered little beyond glassy, silver-sheened minimalism, unfolding in a single atmospheric but unsatisfying musical arc. Its cool seductions suffered in juxtaposition with Rimsky Korsakov’s delightful Scheherazade, against whose primary-coloured musical storytelling Hillborg’s iridescent pastels just couldn’t stand out.

Guest leading the BBCSO was rising German violinist Sarah Christian, who made a vivacious, sweet-toned narrator – a beacon of musical energy and light in the midst of some rather unremitting musical seas.