Slovak conductor Juraj Valčuha caused a stir earlier this year with a Philharmonia concert of music by Respighi and Falla, originally scheduled to be conducted by Lorin Maazel, who had died some months previously. It was difficult repertory, interpreted with considerable power and finesse. Returning to the orchestra, he offered a programme of familiar German Romantic works – Weber’s Freischütz Overture, Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and Beethoven’s Eroica – and the dexterity and force of his conducting was again much in evidence.

Valčuha clearly has a strong relationship with the Philharmonia, and the first half was exceptionally fine. The Freischütz Overture heaved with menace without veering towards melodrama, the opening string phrases sliding almost imperceptibly out of silence into sound, the syncopations of the subsequent allegro almost unnerving in their precision. Despite the eruption of someone’s mobile in a crucial pause before the final peroration, the work closed in a real blaze of glory.

The Mendelssohn was done on a grander scale than we usually hear. Sergej Krylov, a late replacement for the indisposed Valeriy Sokolov, was the soloist, phrasing with an assertive sweep, and thinking in terms of big paragraphs rather than reined-in elegance, an approach nicely mirrored in Valčuha’s high Romantic way with the piece. Krylov offered Bruce Fox-Lefriche’s Tribute to Bach as an encore, effectively a paraphrase of the D minor Toccata and Fugue, formidable and commanding in its virtuosity and weight.

The Eroica was fractionally less assured. The outer movements and Scherzo were lean, swift and exciting, with a swaying lilt at the start, a tremendous build-up of tension in the finale and plenty of finely judged detail throughout. The Funeral March, however, seemed curiously careful by comparison, took time to gather momentum and didn’t quite grip as it should.