Valery Gergiev's opening concerts as the London Symphony Orchestra's principal conductor all feature works by Debussy, Stravinsky and Prokofiev. In his second appearance, framed by four of the greatest achievements of early modernism - two each by Debussy and Stravinsky - was a choral rarity by Prokofiev. The cantata Seven, We Are Seven is a setting of a poem by Konstantin Balmont about seven giants who roam the world, laying waste to everything around them.

Prokofiev composed the seven-minute work in 1917 with Russia on the brink of revolution - the symbolic significance of the text is unmistakable. A huge spasm of outrage is created by the way he treats it, with a solo tenor (in this performance the superb Avgust Amonov) declaiming the words and the choir (the first-rate London Symphony Chorus) providing a backdrop of incantatory phrases and animalistic sound effects. However, like all Prokofiev's apings of Stravinskian modernism during the first world war, its brutalist extremes seem cosmetic.

Gergiev and the LSO ended the concert with The Rite of Spring. Though dazzlingly played, it was a performance full of questionable effects - absurd extremes of tempo, no break at all between the two parts, an over-extended pause before the final chord.

The three movements of Debussy's La Mer were impatiently run together too, yet Symphonies of Wind Instruments (in its 1947 revision) was riven with little pauses, making its mosaic construction seem even more piecemeal. Best of all was Prélude à l'Après-Midi d'un Faune, full of ravishing, dreamy textures.