Until André Previn took it up in the mid-1960s, Walton's First Symphony was just another British symphony from the inter-war years, consigned to the same semi-obscurity as contemporary examples by Arnold Bax, Arthur Bliss and George Lloyd. Previn's performances - especially his RCA recording with the London Symphony Orchestra, released in 1967 - changed all that, charging the work with a dynamism and rhythmic energy that made it seem much more than second-hand Sibelius given an edge of Stravinskian nastiness. Accordingly, the work was an obvious and very welcome inclusion in the LSO's series of concerts to mark Previn's 75th birthday.

Previn still commands the symphony's architecture instinctively, shaping the first movement towards the swinging modulations of its huge coda with massive certainty. Forty years on, his view of the work is inevitably different: it seems broader. Tempos are more measured (some of that famous recording was lightning-fast, in any case), and the vicious edge of the scherzo is blunted, with less of a jazzy snap to the rhythms. Significantly, the slow movement is now spacious, less chilly, more forgiving. With exemplary playing from all sections of the LSO, this was unmistakably a performance to confirm the work's stature as one of the finest of all British symphonies - up there with Elgar's two and the best of Vaughan Williams, even if it was less spectacular than before.

What Previn did for Walton's First, his wife, Anne-Sophie Mutter, has been doing regularly for Korngold's Violin Concerto, and her honed and honeyed performance preceded the symphony. It's a work that does exactly what it says on the label, providing the soloists with plenty of opportunities to display their depth of tone, as well as the chance to dazzle with technique in the finale. And it spices its succession of toothsome melodies with just a hint of harmonic naughtiness. Mutter and Previn caught all that perfectly.