Tugan Sokhiev may have bowed out as music director of Welsh National Opera but, that episode apart, things aren't going so badly in his career. His relationship with the Philharmonia seems comfortable, and his expressive approach to the Russian orchestral repertoire was evident in this programme.

The brief tone poem The Enchanted Lake prompted a mental salute to its composer, Anatol Liadov: we owe him our thanks for not fulfilling Diaghilev's commission for the Firebird ballet and allowing Stravinsky to step into the breach. There's an element of prevarication in the score, of Liadov being afraid to dip his toes into icy waters full of foreboding rather than fairytale charm.

Sokhiev brought out the sinister mood, and the glint of harp and celeste that suggests that something might develop, though it never does. But Liadov's darkness was a good foil for the exotic colouring of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, with the characterisation of the cruel sultan strongly delivered by the brass heavies, and leader James Clark making Scheherazade's insinuating lines cast a subtle spell.

Sokhiev conducted with assurance, but pulled the tempi about in a way that may have showed control but didn't add to the music - indeed, sometimes detracted from its implicit momentum.

It was in the partnership with soloist Simon Trpceski in Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto that sparks flew. This was as muscular a performance as might be expected from two young lions vying for supremacy, with the emphasis on the work's fiery rhythmic character even more potent than usual. Trpceski's pianism is formidable, but the furious pace of the finale made for some mad scrambles.

Perhaps conscious of that, the reflective melancholy of his Tchaikovsky encore, October from The Seasons, offered poetry to balance the rhetoric.