There was something startling about Anne-Sophie Mutter's programme with the London Philharmonic Orchestra: she played and directed Bach's three violin concertos on modern instruments without any concessions to period practice.

As one of the world's most famous virtuosos, Mutter seems perfectly qualified to rehabilitate a style of Bach playing that has become almost totally unfashionable. But her steely performances and unyielding direction turned these effervescent pieces into hackneyed warhorses and, instead of reclaiming the concertos for modern instrument groups, her playing embodied the cliches of big-band baroque performances.

Nearly every movement of the concertos is derived from dance forms, but there was no hint of grace or charm in Mutter's interpretations of those in A minor and E major. The finales were robbed of their infectious energy in performances that were crudely mechanical. Where the music should have been buoyed by imagination and insight, it was brutalised by Mutter's relentless, hard-edged sound, and an approach that treated the concertos as if they needed to be beaten into submission.

However, in the slow movements, there were glimpses of a warmer side to her playing. In the andante of the A minor concerto, she created a sudden moment of drama, as a delicate melodic line was suspended over an aching dissonance in the accompanying strings, a rare flowering of lyricism.

In the double concerto, Mutter was partnered by the young Armenian violinist Sergey Khachatryan, and in each movement it was the teenager's playing that was the most sensitive: where Mutter's phrasing was square and literal, his was imaginative and supple, and his heartfelt playing of the main melody of the slow movement provided the concert's most memorable frisson. In fact, it was Khachatryan, not Mutter, who proved the possibility of playing Bach without ceding to the early music movement.