Taking a sabbatical doesn't mean quite the same thing to Maxim Vengerov as it would to most of us. In between learning to tango and mastering jazz improvisation, he has been knocking out concerts at the rate of one a fortnight.

Here he was joining the LSO and his old friend Mstislav Rostropovich for Beethoven's Violin Concerto, and though it was good to hear him in one of the classical warhorses again, the performance did not dispel the impression that he is finding it harder to summon the passion that once characterised his playing.

What there was in abundance was sweetness and, in the first movement, an intriguing introspection. Yet there wasn't enough dynamism to put it in relief, with Rostropovich setting sluggish tempos. In the second movement Vengerov span beautifully poised, seamless melodies, but there was little sense that they were leading anywhere.

Vengerov was besieged by autograph hunters as he took his seat in the audience for the second half, but if this concert was a love-in for anyone it was for Rostropovich, who had commissioned a new work from another friend.

Ephrem Podgaits, little known outside his native Russia, claims to write for listeners sidelined by the avant-garde. His Second Symphony is a substantial three-movement work built from a tiny amount of thematic material - something that should suggest tautness. However, in this first performance it sprawled. Fleeting passages suggested a flexing of musical muscle, but melodic and rhythmic cliches were never far away, and the combination of celesta, harp and bells as used at the end of the second movement was straight off a kitschy Christmas film soundtrack.

Again, the question was one of contrast, or lack of it: Podgaits apparently wanted his symphony to express hopefulness, but with so little doubt in the music to set this against, that hope was empty. A toothless end to the LSO's season.