Violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter does one thing brilliantly: her laceratingly loud tone cuts through the densest orchestral texture, making her a powerful and domineering soloist. But it also makes her a limited musical partner, and in Brahms's Double Concerto, with cellist Lynn Harrell and the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Kurt Masur, she assaulted the music from her very first entry.

Harrell was reduced to a bit-part player as Mutter controlled the dialogue of the first movement with steely determination, and in the second movement, she submerged the cello. This musical domination may have been a remarkable technical feat, but it did Brahms's concerto few favours. Instead of the fluid give-and-take that defines a great performance of this piece, Mutter and Harrell were badly matched as personalities and musicians.

It was a pity this unevenly pitched battle between the soloists masked the playing of the LPO. Under Masur's insightful, unfussy direction, they gave a visionary performance of Dvorak's New World Symphony. The slow movement unfolded with a sense of vast space and stillness, and the famous cor anglais tune sounded, for once, like an evocation of the wide-open vistas of the American wilderness instead of an accompaniment to an infamous Hovis advert. Masur was equally convincing in the earthy energy of the outer movements. The first had an inexorable momentum, but the finale was even more impressive. Masur whipped the players into an unstoppable frenzy, creating a wild musical excitement and making a compelling case for the individuality of Dvorak's symphonic structure.