The conductor Michael Lloyd had his players eating out of his hand for the Presto of Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony with its brilliant controlled fury.

Lloyd's crisp definitions and flair for finding colour, were breaking champagne glasses long before that. Building his orchestral balance on a string sound more diaphanous than lush, he imparted to Schoenberg's second chamber symphony a delicacy of tint and texture.

The orchestra, and the mezzo Serena Kay, provided a suitably interstellar performance of Belioz's song-cycle Nuits d'Ete