Few composers have dwelled on the life of Christ as devotedly as Messiaen. Even fewer have attempted to portray his ascension into heaven. But most remarkable of all is the luxuriant idiom Messiaen employed to depict such an abstractly spiritual event. Unmistakably French, L'Ascension contains not a breath of religious austerity. If anything, it is unashamedly programmatic, the ascent itself portrayed by steadily rising strings and ecstatic hallelujahs that explode into an exultant fugato. Conductor Thomas Dausgaard judged the balance between restraint and freedom well, but there were moments, such as the ending of the second movement, where the BBC Philharmonic might have done better left to its own devices.

Dausgaard's reading of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was an essay in hindering both orchestra and soloists. The piece, easily Beethoven's most virtuosic symphony, is unquestionably difficult. But it is a terrible shame when this fact is brought home so starkly in a performance. The pacing of the long slow movement, for example, can be hard to judge. Dausgaard's solution was to treat the andante middle section like a Viennese waltz, skipping along with airy grace. He may have been aiming to minimise its boredom factor, but the result was that, stripped of all that makes it special, this movement sounded longer than ever.

And there were more problems in the finale. The City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus was superb, and the soloists - Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Janice Watson, Alistair Miles, Ann Taylor - more than equal to the task. When singers of this calibre sound as ill at ease as they occasionally did here, the fault must lie with the conductor. Perhaps some of Dausgaard's problems were because he conducted from memory - an impressive feat when it works, but frustrating to watch when it doesn't.