Vasily Petrenko was at the helm of the London Philharmonic taking time out from his Scousers to probe and reveal with his customary precision a repertoire that is so plainly at the very heart of his being.

Stravinsky’s Scherzo is essentially a dress rehearsal for the Firebird’s entrance with every section of the richly adorned but discreetly muted orchestra whirring to the perpetual motion of as yet only imagined choreography. Three harps pick out the iridescence of the Firebird’s plumage, the scoring so light as to point up the elusiveness of it all. A perfect morsel of Stravinskian ephemera, deftly attended.

But stranger imaginings were stirring in the quasi-Spanish, castanet clicking, danse macabre which pops up as the second subject of Prokofiev’s 3rd Piano Concerto. The joy of this piece lies in the precarious tension between its brittle toccata-like elements and a ravishing laid-back lyricism and that was something Oleg Marshev took in his stride, the sound full and beautiful, eerily so in that moment at the start of the second movement where the hands go as far as they can in opposite directions. A little more hard-edged brilliance might have served the devilish nature of the piece better and I can see why Marshev was quick to offer an encore – Liszt’s Transcendental Study No.10 – where he could take the lid off his sound and temperament.