Is nobody content just to be a pianist any more? Andras Schiff and Murray Perahia are among those who have been pursuing complementary careers in conducting; both have recently given London concerts directing works from the keyboard. This programme's centrepiece was Mendelssohn's First Piano Concerto. Schiff doubled up as soloist and conductor - an energetic one at that, leaping up for orchestral passages, flinging back his tails and landing with a thump on the piano stool just in time to hit the keyboard.

This is, of course, nothing new; it's what composers such as Mendelssohn would have envisaged, and what audiences of the time, who went to concerts either to hear new music or to catch a fabled performer, would have expected. But is it the best way for today's audiences, with their very different priorities, to hear these works? Admittedly, it can cut out the middle man, facilitating a coherent, single-minded performance. But the danger is that, with the pianist's attention inevitably divided, the solo part can suffer.

And that was more or less the case here, most obviously in the second movement. The piano's first scene-setting passage should melt into the cello melody, but instead it leapt out of the way. Later, as the movement's main melody drew to a close, Schiff was playing tender phrases with his right hand while forcefully beating time for the cellos with his left. Perhaps those phrases sounded tender enough - but with Schiff's full attention, might it have been magical? Moreover, if the pianist's focus is so obviously distracted from the piano melody, how can ours be expected to stay on it?

The finale was much better, Schiff dashing off Mendelssohn's effervescent end-of-pier vamping with an irresistibly light touch. There was grace and vibrancy, too, in the symphonies that framed the concerto - Mozart's No 33 and Haydn's No 102, both of which Schiff conducted - though not the last ounce of dynamism. But if Schiff is still a pianist who conducts, rather than the other way round, that's no bad thing.