Richard Strauss's early symphonic fantasy Aus Italien got its composer into trouble. Not realising the popular Neapolitan song Funiculì, Funiculà was a published composition by Luigi Denza, he incorporated it into his set of musical picture postcards from Italy, and was successfully sued by Denza for copyright infringement. Subsequent performances would cost Strauss's publishers money, but the reasons why Aus Italien is rarely heard lie deeper.

Strauss's scoring was impeccable from the first, but his period of intermittent musical genius was to come, and the dressing up of the ideas in Aus Italien is far superior to the ideas themselves, Denza's included. But such was the quality of playing in this performance by the London Philharmonic under Gianandrea Noseda that the result was sumptuously enjoyable.

Rarely does a British orchestra produce such glamorous string playing, a flawless amalgam of silk, silver and steel. The brass, woodwind and percussion contributions, too, were immaculately realised and coalesced into a gloriously rich and finely balanced soundscape.

The first half was musically more worthwhile. The opener was the ballet music from Verdi's Otello, a redundant addition to the score forced on the composer by the requirements of the Paris Opera, where a dance sequence was an obligatory addition for the work's first French production in 1894. Here, the sheer invention of Verdi's scoring was brilliantly conveyed, with the LPO musicians keenly responsive to Noseda's elegant but determined lead.

Even finer was the performance of Dvorˇák's Cello Concerto, with the Italian Enrico Dindo as soloist. His veiled tone found out the secret emotional heart of the piece, and was perfectly dovetailed with Noseda's overview.