Colin Davis is marking his 80th birthday this year with a series of concerts with the London Symphony Orchestra, each devoted to a single composer with whom he feels a special affinity. One of those programmes had to be given over to Hector Berlioz: when Davis's legacy is assessed, his championing of Berlioz over half a century will rank high among his achievements.

Davis remains unmatched in this music. His account of the dramatic symphony Harold in Italy, with the solo viola played by the lustrous-toned Tabea Zimmermann, was drawn in bold, clear outlines, its trajectory always perfectly clear and faultlessly played by the LSO. Zimmermann is the kind of self-reliant soloist Davis can rely on to make their contributions count with the minimum of fuss while he shapes the bigger details. Whether taking the spotlight in the first movement, adding her discursive commentary to the Pilgrims' March in the second, or making the briefest of appearances before the final Brigands' Orgy reaches its climax, she judged it all perfectly.

Davis's special alchemy was needed more in the opening King Lear Overture: not even the most fervent Berliozian would claim it as one of his most successful works, though its debts to Beethoven are intriguing. This performance made light of most of the shortcomings, even though the overture's odd proportions could never be disguised completely. The only disappointment came in the song cycle Les Nuits d'Eté, where despite the flexibility and lightness of the accompaniments, Anne Schwanewilms proved a resolutely detached soloist, content to produce an unvaried if beautiful sound, and apparently never tempted to probe beneath the surface of the texts at all.