Having championed the music of Roussel in recent seasons, Stéphane Denève here turned his attention to another of his compatriots, the inscrutable elder statesman of French music Henri Dutilleux. Denève and the RSNO tried out his First Symphony earlier this year at the St Magnus festival, exploiting the sensuous sound-world of this mid-20th century work, but struggled at times with its complexities.

On this return to the work, there was a far greater sense of coherence to the performance. Dutilleux's music is built out of many intricate layers and Denève achieved the delicate balance of delineating these different levels without overwhelming the lyricism on the surface. Particularly effective was the Intermezzo third movement. This is the emotional heart of the symphony, lush and chromatically inflected but with more than a hint of darkness running through it.

Given that the symphony is a substantial work, half an hour in length and weighty with it, this was a surprising choice to open the programme. Or perhaps the problem was simply that the rest of the concert didn't match what came before. Leif Ove Andsnes was an elegant, poetic soloist in Rachmaninov's Fourth Piano Concerto, but his understated performance didn't quite accord with the passion of the orchestra's accompaniment.

The performance of Stravinsky's Firebird Suite that followed was not the orchestra's most successful either. The brass had an unwelcome tendency to dominate in loud sections, while the strings lacked the intensity in the quiet passages to support the woodwind solos.