The Orchestre National de Lyon came to the Festival Hall as part of the South Bank's Classic International series, a supposedly prestigious venture that purports to feature the "World's Finest Orchestras". But on its showing in Mahler's Seventh Symphony, the ONL wouldn't even qualify as one of France's best orchestras.

The concert felt unnecessary. Unless it is the Royal Concertgebouw or the Vienna or Berlin Philharmonic under a great conductor, a visiting orchestra that programmes only Mahler's Seventh is either overweeningly bold or downright foolish. In this case the reason seemed to be the latter: it's the least fashionable of the symphonies for various reasons, not least the practical ones of being difficult to play and even more difficult to conduct, and in this performance neither orchestra nor conductor passed the test.

The American Alan Gilbert has been carving out a name for himself since 1999 when he took over the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic; he's also recently been appointed the first music director of the Santa Fe Opera. But this appearance could not have helped his reputation one bit, with his over-deliberate accenting of every bar (perhaps he was worried the ONL would otherwise not stay together), the clipped, martial rhythms and a self-conscious, exaggerated rubato when anything expressive was required.

The work gets harder to conduct as it goes on. Gilbert's brash account of the problematic finale whipped up lots of noise but did nothing to turn it into a satisfactory or convincing conclusion, and sometimes seemed as if it would never end. By then the orchestra's shortcomings, the technical blemishes, the threadbare strings and total lack of bloom in the textures were so obvious that one wondered how often they had played the work before, and how regularly they give concerts under Alan Gilbert.