Music: Bringing folk together

Classical music: RPO Tchaikovsky/ Bartok Series

Barbican Hall, London

Tchaikovsky and Bartok. Tchaikovsky Symphonies, Bartok Piano Concertos, and more. The connections lie in folklore, the "contrasts" are legion. But who needs an excuse for bringing them together? The Royal Philharmonic, under its music director Daniele Gatti, is doing just that, and it's interesting to note that the deeper you go into the rough and ready subculture of their respective homelands, the closer the two composers' kinship would seem to be. Friday's concert began and ended with folksong dressed up as concert music, and the spirit of it was universal. Foreign tongues singing from the same song-sheet - the one we all know.

Bartok's Transylvanian Dances - a jolly curtain-raiser whose tricky footwork at once established that Gatti's increased familiarity with the orchestra is not yet breeding contempt - began life as a Piano Sonatina. But, before that, it might have been chipped from the same standing stones that gave us the Second Piano Concerto. The key there is rhythm, rhythm, primal rhythm. But the rhythm has shape and direction, and gradually, as if by some kind of osmosis, it assumes all manner of melodic inflection until, before you know it, a percussive instrument has been reinvented as a singing one.

Peter Donohoe, the piano soloist here, never quite made that leap of faith. In the beginning, his rhythm did not hold fast. Within every fistful of notes (and none are incidental) are myriad accentings, each shaping the inflection in amazing ways. It isn't just about muscle. But Donohoe went at the first movement like he might an assault course, one he was duty bound to finish as a matter of honour. Too much of the solo part's very distinctive, quasi-baroque, character profile was subsumed in the haemorrhage of notes. Nor was the tempo constant, slackening or pressing ahead to the detriment of its intricate alliance with the RPO wind band (excellent - not least those tucketing trumpets).

But Gatti kept it all on the rails (only just in places), opening up magic casements on to the slow movement with the arrival of strings and one of those extraordinarily deep exhalations of sound that are his speciality. Donohoe then relaxed into his primitive chorale until particularly virulent forms of night-life (belligerent trombones hinting at the proximity of a certain miraculous mandarin) kicked in. The performance really came alive here. It's a pity that Gatti wasn't able to capitalise on the silent overhang of the movement by moving attacca into the finale (an awkward page turn for someone?), but Donohoe playing timpani and bass drum at their own game was good for some visceral hard-ball.

Tchaikovsky's Second Symphony, the "Little Russian", was not so little. It's a distant horizon that the solo horn surveys at the outset. The tune is Ukrainian and Gatti had the woodwind choir sing it at the top of their voices, in phrasing to match. There's no other way to play, to sing, this music: it's full-throated or nothing at all. So enter the Cossacks, strings digging in with the heel of every bow towards a thrilling expansion of the theme at the climax of the development.

There was also a lot of charm in Gatti's reading, the toy soldiers of the andantino marziale beefing up nicely at the close, as if Tchaikovsky had suddenly made men of them. And, all the while, those songs Mother Russia taught us were given full rein. The feverish festivities of the finale - a veritable coronation of sound - found the strings providing as many of the fireworks as the brass and percussion. Even the piccolo got to be a star.

Gatti has restored the Royal Philharmonic's confidence and pride. And they in turn did as much for Tchaikovsky.

Series continues with Bartok's Piano Concerto No 3 and `Dance Suite' and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No 3: 7.30pm Friday. Barbican booking: 0171- 638 8891

Edward Seckerson