You have to feel sorry for harpists. It's the least portable instrument of the orchestra, you have to arrive an hour before everyone else to tune up, and then the agony is compounded when a string gives way with the sound of a tendon snapping just before a vital entry at the beginning of the second movement of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique.

The speed and efficiency with which the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande's harpist effected repairs was a remarkable instance of grace under pressure - though, at such times, she must sorely wish she had taken up the triangle.

The Geneva-based orchestra is one of Europe's most formidable ensembles. The vast ranks leave little elbow room on the Sage's platform - the offstage bells may have been intended for atmospheric effect, unless there was simply nowhere else to put them.

The Symphonie Fantastique is a suitably monumental vehicle for the orchestra's heavyweight resources. Berlioz's unrequited expression of love for the actress Harriet Smithson is the most feverish marriage proposal, fan letter and suicide note in the Romantic canon. In less experienced hands, the work can seem hysterical and inchoate, yet Marek Janowski, conducting from memory, is thrillingly responsive to the morbid drama. His reading darkens as it develops towards the climactic witches' Sabbath scene, where the harmonic elements boil together in a diabolic stew.

Mozart's Piano Concerto No 21 has the clarity of spring water by comparison. The young Russian soloist Nikolai Lugansky ripples through it with an insouciance that doesn't entirely plumb the depths of the work's pathos, but gives an immaculate account of its glittering surface.