Now 80, and as ageless on the podium as ever, Sir Edward Downes remains one of the greatest Shostakovich interpreters alive today. He isn't one to dwell on every ironic nuance, preferring to focus on the grand design with a clarity of vision often missing from performances of Shostakovich's symphonies. In the case of the Leningrad Symphony in particular, losing sight of its broad sweep is fatal. As one near-contemporary critic cruelly noted, it can seem impossible to listen to it without one's mind wandering. Even for devotees, that is sometimes true. But when a conductor has the score in his blood, as Downes has, its power is unquestionable.

Sustaining momentum in a work where climaxes are piled on top of each other thick and fast is a major feat. For Downes, every crescendo makes perfect sense. The famous opening movement, with its supposed depiction of Hitler's invasion of Russia in 1941, contains one of the longest orchestral crescendos ever written and as such can be nightmarish to pace. By seemingly doing little other than sustaining a minimal beat, Downes highlighted the music's mechanistic quality, as though inviting the orchestra to play itself like a machine. In the starkly tragic third movement, too, the plainness of Downes's style meant that attention was focused more sharply on the depth and richness of sound he draws from the BBC Philharmonic, to intensely moving effect. And this is one of Downes's greatest gifts: to appear to be doing nothing while presiding over great performances.

Like the Leningrad Symphony, Respighi's Pines of Rome has its flamboyant, show-stopping moments. But it was the slower third movement that won the audience's heart, framed tenderly by John Bradbury's beautiful clarinet solos.