Paavo Berglund was once a familiar figure in the UK. One of the first Finnish conductors to achieve an international reputation, he is primarily associated with the glory days of the Bournemouth Symphony, of which he was music director in the 1970s. Now in his mid-70s, he has become a somewhat infrequent guest with the London Philharmonic, while a new generation of Finnish conductors - including Esa Pekka Salonen and Jukka Pekka Saraste - has perhaps eclipsed him in the public eye.

They haven't eclipsed him as a musician, however. The second half of this concert consisted of Sibelius's Sixth and Seventh Symphonies. Berglund brings a lifetime's experience to bear on both, and his interpretations have a unique profundity. Sibelius began work concurrently on the two symphonies in 1918. Berglund sees them very much as a doppelgänger-ish pair, both riddled with paradoxes.

The Sixth is cool and spectral, veering between serenity and nightmare, and Berglund painstakingly exposes the incipient violence beneath its crystalline surface. He presents the Seventh, meanwhile, with its astonishing one-movement structure, as a tremendous affirmation, as if the ghosts of its predecessor have been chased away, leaving a new musical landscape that evolves with ever-increasing wonder. Yet Berglund's interpretation is also shot through with an agonising sadness, a reminder that this is very much a terminal work. Shortly after its completion, Sibelius lapsed into the compositional silence that lasted until his death 30 years later.

Before the interval, we were in very different territory with Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto. John Lill was the soloist, celebrating the anniversary of his debut, aged nine, some 50 years ago. Once past a couple of ill-focused moments at the beginning, Lill played with the poetic nobility and unforced grace that characterises his work at its best. The slow movement, with Lill's infinite serenity slowly taming the ferocious sounds that Berglund coaxed from the orchestra, was breathtaking.