This is a concert that grows to greatness…Never has a programme built to its own private apotheosis as surely as this, with lofty yet almost unbearably moving accounts of the Emperor Waltz and the Blue Danube itself...Rarely have I heard the melancholy, majesty and many-layered beauties of these wonderful pieces so movingly revealed. It takes a master conductor to guide an orchestra of the Philharmonic’s pedigree and power to heights of which even it can only occasionally dream; but that is what it is our privilege to experience here.