Symphony No 7 (Le Midi) - Haydn

Piano Concerto in B flat, K238 - Mozart

Piano Concerto in F, K459 - Mozart

It's a pity when Geoffrey Spratt and the Orchestra of St Cecilia go to the trouble of programming some rarely-aired Haydn symphonies that the resulting performances should sound so lack-lustre. The early works of the Matin/Midi/Soir provide plenty of solo opportunities. In Le Midi at the NCH on Tuesday, however, these were taken up with variable success, ranging in the strings from the stylish point of those for cello to the spongily unconvincing in the ones for violins.

The orchestra's playing, however, came much more to life in the first of the two Mozart piano concertos on offer, the early Concerto in B flat, K238. Sadly, though, while the orchestral playing was scaled with admirable delicacy, the soloist, Hugh Tinney, offered a too-straight-lined, minimalist approach, quite overlooking the pleasures of the galant style that the orchestra was managing to pick up.

In Tinney's handling of the altogether better-known and finer concerto of the second half - K459 in F - there was, too, a sense of reserve born of caution rather than sensitivity. Orchestra and conductor here reverted to their loosely-focused norm. With playing from the soloist which might best be described as minimalist, the opening Allegro carried little sense of brio or sparkle and suffered from too much greyly-rendered passagework. In general, there was little sense of freshness, discovery or relish in the music-making.

The soloist's musically poker-faced approach was dropped in the cadenzas, where, as a result, the unshackled freedom and brilliance were, like a bright light penetrating unexpectedly into a darkened room, almost disturbingly dazzling.