The second of Gianandrea Noseda's two concerts with the BBC Philharmonic was like a scrapbook of postcards sent home from Rome over nearly two centuries – a musical time-travelogue that worked unusually well.

Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony began the evening in a world of sunny 19th-century streets and peasant villages. With the orchestra pared down to chamber size, Noseda kept the music dancing on delicate feet. Only with the distant horn calls in the middle of the third movement did his approach seem a little too polite and graceful. Otherwise, the shapely phrases zipped by, buoyed by some precise yet relaxed playing and by Noseda's careful attention to balance.

Two Rossini arias brought a stellar performance from the Alaskan mezzo Vivica Genaux, whose substantial, steel-tipped voice filled the Albert Hall as easily as if it were the Wigmore, and dispatched the vocal gymnastics with ease and charm.

Yet the most vivid snapshots came from Peter Maxwell Davies's 1998 Roma Amor, three movements inspired by the composer's time there in the 1950s. Writing for a large orchestra but scoring sparingly so that each change of instrument seemed like turning a new corner, Davies evokes a solitary walk around the city, depicting its grubby, pugilistic beauty from its pavements up to its church towers. The night-time middle movement, in which snatches of band or congregational music are heard as if through half-closed doorways, was especially effective, even though some of the quieter details were lost in this vast venue.

After this, the filmic sweeps of Respighi's Pines of Rome, completed in 1924, sounded more than ever like a picturesque travel montage. But, with the third movement's taped nightingale singing dreamily from the gallery, and the Albert Hall organ thundering away beside the brass at the end, this was an ideal fit for the hall, and the orchestra was on top form.