The Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra's British tour was really only a flying visit, with just two concerts, at Birmingham and Cardiff, under the baton of Yan Pascal Tortelier. Since the orchestra's history dates back to when Oslo was still Christiania, and Edvard Grieg was trying to establish an ensemble of calibre, opening with his concert overture In Autumn was a symbolic gesture. This early work, written in Rome when Grieg was still discovering his destiny, has a certain naivety, but the incipient lyricism and a more dramatic rhetoric emerged clearly in this performance.

The Oslo Philharmonic was honed to near perfection under the directorship of Mariss Jansons, and, in Elgar's Enigma Variations, the strings betrayed that legacy in their disciplined and burnished sound, with fine solos from the principal viola and cello. But Tortelier's approach was often breezily unsentimental.

In conducting style, Tortelier is a law unto himself, with angular gestures and kung-fu cuts and thrusts. He used neither baton nor score in Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony, removing all constraints and resulting in some even more idiosyncratic signalling and choreography. The Oslo players could barely bring themselves to glance in his direction and, while this syndrome is hardly without precedent among orchestras, it was very noticeable here. The only time Tortelier's spiky injunctions seemed to relate directly to the music was in the scherzo's manic pizzicato, which served to release the vibrant flourish of the finale, but the soul of Tchaikovsky eluded him. Tortelier's Gallic charm had nevertheless fired the audience, and the Norwegians relaxed visibly in the two encores: the string interlude Touch Her Soft Lips and Part from Walton's film music for Olivier's Henry V and the Trepak from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite. Tortelier looked pretty pleased - perhaps he had yet to see the note recommending Jansons' great recording of the Fourth Symphony.