A couple of years ago, Charles Mackerras conducted some revelatory performances of Brahms: lithe, lucid and above all alert to the constant rhythmic nuances that Brahms’s contemporaries took for granted. I have not since encountered that kind of sensitivity to Brahms or related repertoire either from Mackerras or anyone else.

Last night, Mackerras had the opportunity to bring rhythmic flexibility to Schumann’s Symphony No 3 (Rhenish) but he seized it with only one hand. Actually, it was less even than that: only the last of the work’s five movements demonstrated real imagination in introducing the little spurts and hesitations that give such character to the melodic material.

The remainder of the symphony may not have reached that level, though there were lovely things in all the preceding movements. In the first, the horns were indulged in their epiphanic moment near the conclusion and rose to the challenge with rather more heroic verve than the raucous contribution the brass had made to Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel earlier in the programme. Woodwind and soft horns combined mellifluously in the Scherzo, while the enchanted forest beckoned in the third-movement intermezzo.

The less than urbane noises emitted in Till Eulenspiegel were not the greatest problem — the eponymous rogue is after all a pretty earthy character. What disappointed was the headlong rush from first bar to last. A brisk tempo for the exploits of a merry prankster is one thing; a cavalry charge is quite another.

Whatever the Strauss may have lacked in flexibility was amply compensated for in Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto in G, to which Lars Vogt brought extraordinarily expressive phrasing and a variety of touch.