Yet more anniversary programming from one of our major orchestras. One might complain, but that would be a bit hard on the LPO, whose Mozart and Shostakovich concerts have been among this year's more imaginative, and who here threw an unusually unwavering spotlight on Schumann's orchestral works.

Schumann is often thought of as a composer of song first, piano music second and orchestral music some way after that, and this concert probably wouldn't have overturned that idea even if the orchestra had been on top form - which, for the first half at least, it wasn't. Yet these works showed a composer who was innovative even while he wore his influences so obviously, and Kurt Masur conducted them with unflagging commitment: how many others would choose to perform the Genoveva overture and the Second Symphony without a score?

The overture, written for Schumann's only opera, is a rousing opener. The quick, interweaving lines early on didn't bring out the cleanest playing from the strings, but the piece had an ebullient finish of which Rossini would have been proud. It introduced the A minor Cello Concerto, in which, perhaps in deference to someone with almost as much experience as he has, Masur ceded a certain amount of control to his soloist. Natalia Gutman spun the melodic lines into one endless thread, even in the third movement, when Schumann's tendency towards repetition is most relentless. The tempo Gutman chose for the first movement was overly careful, its playful sections lumbering rather; but her approach to the slow movement, played with melting poise, seemed right.

The Second Symphony, very obviously written in Beethoven's shadow, found the orchestra galvanised. Masur still couldn't persuade them to play sufficiently quietly to make the most of the dramatic contrasts; but the violins made a good job of the virtuoso second movement, and the third, with Masur tracing big arcs of melody in his conducting, formed a sumptuous, emotional centre.