Dmitri Smirnov's Triple Concerto No 2 was an inauspicious start to the London Symphony Orchestra's series of commissions to celebrate their centenary year. It's an admirably democratic scheme, in which the players have chosen the composers; Smirnov will be followed throughout next season by Richard Bissill, Huw Watkins, and Karl Jenkins.

But Smirnov's turgid, derivative piece was a disappointment. Scored for solo violin, harp, and double bass, and conducted by Andrew Davis, the piece not only squandered the talents of violinist Gordan Nikolitch, harpist Bryn Lewis, and double bass player Rinat Ibragimov, but it failed to create any musical or structural interest.

Cast in three long movements, the concerto mined a post-Shostakovichian melancholy, as baleful dissonances transformed into meandering tunes. The first movement juxtaposed dense orchestral textures with delicate writing for the soloists; the finale began with spiky, fast music before a lugubrious conclusion. But Smirnov lacks anything like Shostakovich's sense of irony or drama, and instead of creating a turbulent expressive world, the Triple Concerto could manage only a maundering gloom.

But all memory of this perplexing premiere disappeared with Davis's magisterial performance of Mahler's Second Symphony. Instead of thinking about the piece as an excuse for self-indulgence, Davis's focused approach created a journey that was as convincing architecturally as it was emotionally, from the opening funeral march to the crowning moment of resurrection 80 minutes later, with the London Symphony Chorus on thrillingly impassioned form. Even in the middle movements, Davis refused to sentimentalise, with a deliberate andante and a cool scherzo. He made Mahler's massive, diffuse structure have a compelling logic, even in the sprawling finale. Framed by the radiant singing of soloist Michelle DeYoung and Laura Claycomb, the music began as a vision of hellish fury, until the final passage, whose sheer sonic power realised Mahler's vision of death overcome.