Proms: Royal Concertgebouw/ Haitink Mahler Chamber Orchestra/Aimard

(...) High-end music-making continued in the late-night Prom, when the pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard offered coruscating solo Ligeti in between Beethoven and Haydn with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra’s young wizards.

As a conductor, Aimard isn’t a contender for the Malcolm Sargent Prize for Podium Magnificence. But the ensemble sense in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 2 was total; and if Haydn’s Symphony No 102 lacked impudent wit, it always stayed tidy.

With his five selected Ligeti Etudes, Aimard showed why he’s a contemporary music interpreter without peer, brilliant and humane. His Beethoven, performed on a piano bared to the strings, was more distinctive still: light-fingered, crisp without being mannered. Aimard and his forces never tried to push the piece towards 19th-century grandeur; sculpting the bright notes out of silence gave them all the drama required.