Vladimir Ashkenazy announced a month ago that he would not play the piano in public again. For those who remember him in his keyboard prime, before conducting began to dominate his musical life, it was a sad loss, for there was a thrilling fire to his playing that he has only rarely matched on the podium. It all gave a poignancy to his appearance with the Philharmonia, his first in London since the announcement, especially as the first half was devoted to Chopin, a composer of whom Ashkenazy the pianist was such a memorable interpreter.

Two movements from Glazunov's suite Chopiniana, the Nocturne and Tarantella, sharpened the sadness, for the arrangements only smudge the melodic outlines and thicken the textures of the piano originals, robbing them of their exquisite poetry. The Philharmonia's playing was routine rather than suitably enchanted. In accompanying the Second Piano Concerto, too, there were a few moments of rough ensemble, and the orchestra and the soloist Maria Joao Pires never quite seemed to gel. Pires produced some characteristically pearly phrases, as well as delicately traced filigree, but often her playing seemed tense, anxious even.

Dvorak's Eighth Symphony followed in a performance that had its striking moments - the climax of the slow movement, the opening of the finale - but too often settled for high-class routine. Balance was approximate rather than precise. This, the Philharmonia's last concert of its season in the QEH, was surely the opportunity for a relatively small-scale account of this charmingly personal symphony, yet Ashkenazy had opted for eight double basses, muddying the sound and weighing down music that can be so graceful and athletic.