Prom 52:
BBC Symphony Orchestra - H K Gruber; Gruber, Weill and Eisler

H K Gruber (credit: Johnny Volcano)

When a concert beginning at 10 p.m. is subtitled 'a night of musical subversion', the audience has every right to recoil in its seats.

The centrepiece was his musical calling card, Frankenstein!!. Fully deserving of the extra exclamation mark, it is subtitled a 'musical pan-demonium' - not a pretentious description in any sense, as it cannot properly be described in any other way.

Gruber was the exuberant soloist, billed as 'baritone chansonnier'. But in reality that was only half the story, as he employed a vast array of musical props and hand gestures to tell his tale. His vocal asides were extremely funny, the incredibly low 'monsterlet dancing round our house' a comic treat, while the little mouse, the little rat and Frankenstein were given appropriate shrieks, catty asides and an unexpectedly rich baritone.

The settings of H.C. Artmann's verse also included endearing, nonsensical poems about Bond, Batman and Superman, and were dressed in orchestration that ranged from the exquisite to the downright ridiculous – and hugely enjoyable at that. Rarely has a classical piece been able to make the audience laugh so much!

Ideal music for children, although even the most hardy would have been tucked up in bed by the end. Still, there was an appreciative gaggle of Prommers for the BBC SO's percussionist to throw his exploded paper bags at, and later to marvel at the talents of several orchestra members wielding hosepipes above their heads.

By complete contrast, the UK premiere of Gruber's Hidden Agenda was a far more serious affair, coming just two days after its world premiere with the same forces in Lucerne. Scored for large orchestra and conducted by Gruber from what looked like a huge map, the music was richly Romantic in a manner recalling Berg or early Schoenberg (and ultimately Mahler). And though distinctive melodic material was hard to grasp the textures were skilfully manipulated. As in Frankenstein!!, Gruber seemed overjoyed with the performance - a concert opener of similar proportions to Webern's Passacaglia, if not quite so structurally convincing.

The Gruber sandwich framed a brief, altogether darker section of settings by Bertolt Brecht, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the poet's death. Death was a primary subject in the chosen settings by Kurt Weill and Hanns Eisler, with Gruber and the BBC Singers throwing themselves into the texts with vigour. Eisler's bleak setting of Liturgie vom Hauch was a stark contrast to Weill's relatively tender setting of Kiddush, which featured tenor Daniel Norman's impassioned vocal. The warmth with which the BBC Singers sang the canonic verse was most affecting, though the inevitable problem of balance reared its head with Norman, the singers and the sonorous Albert Hall organ.

In a sense it was a shame these more than pertinent texts were overshadowed by the zany Gruber, but it would be a real killjoy that denied him centre stage after such a performance. Most people left with a smile or a laugh - the evening of musical subversion suddenly less daunting than it first appeared.