Even before he was acknowledged as a phenomenal composer, Mozart was feted as an instrumentalist. People flocked to hear him play his own concertos, directing from the keyboard or the violin - much as Shlomo Mintz directed the English Chamber Orchestra in this all-Mozart concert. But it's safe to say that had Mozart played the Fourth and Fifth concertos the way Mintz did here, nobody would have given a monkey's.

Mintz produces a rich, lovely, virtually flawless sound and has a sure technique. But in this performance that technique was put at the service of some of the most tasteful, safe and grindingly dull playing imaginable. When in the first movement of the Fourth Concerto Mintz made an accidental gloopy slide up to a high note it might feasibly have been the most exciting moment of the piece.

The opening orchestral passage set the tone: the fanfare-like phrase at the very start seemed little more than an announcement of what key we were in; the orchestra's playing thereafter was admirably graceful and polished, but staid. Mintz's sedate tempos were partly to blame, seemingly chosen so that he could negotiate all the notes with the minimum of fuss. Not until the cadenzas of the Fifth Concerto was there anything that sounded like virtuoso brilliance.

What a change from Maxim Vengerov, with whom the orchestra has worked regularly in recent seasons. Mind you, there are similarities: Vengerov is no great shakes yet as a conductor; Mintz, though far more experienced, gave only fairly rudimentary direction when he marshalled the orchestra through the Jupiter Symphony in the second half.

The orchestra couldn't help bringing some shape to the melodically driven passages, and at least in the finale Mozart's sense of harmonic adventure was put fleetingly across. There was some characterful wind playing, and the way the horns led off the collision of all the movement's themes in the closing pages was almost enough to lift this performance above merely routine. But not quite.