Rachmaninov's Third Piano Concerto has a somewhat invidious reputation. Many people think it technically the most exacting and potentially defeating work in the genre. Pianists, so we have been told, have been driven to despair or worse in their attempts to master it. You go to a performance expecting that it will entail either a titanic display of virtuosity or a struggle for survival on the part of the soloist.

Mikhail Pletnev's performance with the Philharmonia and conductor Tugan Sokhiev managed, to a certain extent, to counter such views. Laconic as always on the platform - though here, he permitted himself the occasional smile - Pletnev played it with laid-back charm and an almost indecent ease. This wouldn't appeal to those who equate the work with bravura ostentation. However, his approach allowed us to re-examine the concerto's emotional content.

Pletnev reserved grand statements of Romantic passion for the central Adagio. The outer movements are laced with grace and mercurial wit, and even the lethally tricky first-movement cadenza - in Pletnev's hands a model of unselfconscious dexterity - is comparatively restrained. Sokhiev took his cue from him, though you occasionally sensed that Pletnev's low-key approach cramped the conductor's naturally ebullient, expansive style.

Sokhiev flanked the concerto with Rimsky-Korsakov's Russian Easter Festival Overture and excerpts from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. The Overture was fabulously played with every facet of Rimsky's gorgeous orchestration laid bare, though Sokhiev could not disguise its episodic structure. His choice of material from Romeo and Juliet, meanwhile, exposed the score's inherent darkness. Tellingly, he omitted the Balcony Scene, concentrating instead on Prokofiev's depictions of the violence between feuding Capulets and Montagues. The end result was very stark, though it reminded us of the score's covert purpose: it deals with the inevitable destruction of love in politically dark times.