In Tempus Praesens is Sofia Gubaidulina's second violin concerto. Written for Anne-Sophie Mutter, it suits her sureness and composure. In its UK premiere, even heard after the surface ebullience of Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony, it proved an unexpectedly affirmative piece.

This was especially surprising given Gubaidulina's own comments on finding a new way to write a concerto. For an introspective post-Soviet composer such as herself, the old model, in which the soloist might vanquish the orchestra like a romantic hero conquering the world, is impossibly naive; a modern hero, she says, is always disappointed. Yet as her concerto dissolves away at the end of its unbroken 30 minutes, the impression it leaves feels uncannily like optimism.

Gubaidulina does indeed draw a different relationship between violinist and orchestra. Mutter was the only violinist on stage, though the orchestra Gubaidulina uses is otherwise a full one, albeit rarely fully deployed. The violin begins alone with statements of two or three notes which are then taken up by the other instruments. The music unfolds as a succession of brief episodes, among them a distinctive recurring passage for harpsichord and four slithering violas. Eventually, there is a crisis, the orchestra joining in a succession of violent thuds as if to crush the soloist. Yet the violin is undefeated, and recovers to embark on a final, major-chord glory-run upwards, from which it vanishes into the ether.

Earlier, Andre Previn conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in an efficient reading of Prokofiev that made obvious the mechanical drive that underpins even the slow movement. Signalling noisy eruptions of crisp, machine-like menace from his seat on the podium, the frail-looking conductor could have been the Wizard of Oz, pulling levers behind his curtain.