The “unorthodox interpretative conceptions” promised in the biography of Alexander Toradze are no idle threat. His performance of Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto with the LPO last night injected new life into what too often sounds like a knackered warhorse.

You never know quite what to expect: his melodic lines are enriched with audacious rubatos and punctuated by equally arresting caesuras. Though natural phrasing may be disrupted, the reason is usually evident: it may be to throw interesting textural detail into relief or to herald a new melodic idea. More often than not the wilfulness (if that is what it is) yields dividends.

One felt drawn in by Toradze’s vision in the way he introduced his opening theme: the simple octaves were delivered not as a proclamation but as a whispered confidence. His tone, too, ranges from the most delicately spun filigree to the barnstorming. The latter never offends the ear, though the occasional oral ejaculation is less welcome.

Given all these tonal extremes and rhythmic eccentricities, Jukka-Pekka Saraste did well to keep his orchestral forces in step. Indeed, the LPO offered an exemplary accompaniment.
Saraste seemed entirely at home in Sibelius’s symphonic fantasia Pohjola’s Daughter and especially the Fifth Symphony, on which Finnish musicians are doubtless weaned.

Sibelius’s music is characterised by constant switches of tempo but Saraste, conducting from memory, negotiated the gear changes with idiomatic empathy, steering his players confidently through the turbulent shoals of the start of the finale to the culminating oceanic currents.