Far too many fine pianists, and some rather better than that, have been fatally distracted from what they do best by the glamour of conducting. That made the prospect of a special talent like Piotr Anderszewski directing as well as playing a programme of classical concertos a rather problematic one.

In the event, such worries were unnecessary, for on this evidence Anderszewski isn't likely to desert the keyboard for the rostrum in the foreseeable future. His conducting technique is purely functional, more general encouragement than detailed interpretation, and whenever there is anything important or interesting to do with the solo part, the orchestra - the Polish Chamber in this case - has to carry on as best it can.

This is perfectly fine, for what Anderszewski does with the solo part is invariably interesting, vitally alive and unfailingly musical. At Symphony Hall, Haydn's D major Concerto was sandwiched between Mozart's G major K453 and C minor K491, all three works presented vividly and larger than life, and all containing the kinds of surprises and discoveries that characterise Anderszewski's playing at its best. Anyone who thought the Haydn a well-mannered, conventional work would have had their prejudices tested by the way a furious cadenza erupted in the first movement. They would then be made to realise that the Adagio is perhaps the genuinely profound operatic aria that Haydn never put into a stage work.

The cathartic coda to Mozart's G major Concerto was another operatic moment, but that was just the final detail in a performance characterised by Anderszewski's marvellous tonal palette, and especially his deft exchanges with the woodwind in the slow movement. In the C minor, the orchestral playing was not always so pristine - slightly obtrusive clarinets in the larghetto, occasional attacks of sour chording elsewhere - but the approach was still wonderfully conversational, the tragic undertow of the work never laboured, and every phrase from the keyboard perfectly weighted and coloured.