Grieg's Piano Concerto and Holst's The Planets may be fail-safe programming, but it's to the credit of conductor Richard Hickox and soloist Lars Vogt that this London Symphony concert was more than a dutiful trudge through a brace of popular favourites.

Hickox can always be relied upon to bring something special out of British music, and his account of The Planets was a thrilling reminder of the score's radicalism. In the context of what Holst's contemporaries here were composing during the first world war, a movement like Saturn - a grinding processional that looks forward to Birtwistle in some respects, and which apparently was the composer's own favourite - is quite extraordinary. Even where the music is less original, the composers from whom Holst borrows - Stravinsky, Debussy, Dukas - are generally modernist ones.

All this came vividly to life in Hickox's performance. The LSO never needs much encouragement to confront its Barbican audience with an intimidating level of sound, and so Mars was unleashed with particular venom. Mercury was a dazzling little scherzo, flecked with vivid colour, Jupiter romped away like the virtuoso showpiece it is, and Uranus had a galumphing humour. Only Neptune failed to take off; it was ethereally coloured but its final moments were spoilt by some squirmingly flat singing from the unseen female chorus.

There was plenty of flash and dash in the concerto, too. But though he was more than a match for the attention-seeking bravura, Vogt had been a bit low on charm in music that has its own brand of quiet poetry. Hickox encouraged the orchestra's cello section to let rip in the swooning second subject, though, ensuring that it never sounded routine.