Concert programmes occasionally suffer from being three different occasions rolled into one evening. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra's solid account of Richard Strauss's Don Juan was a fairly safe contribution, but its Romanticism was contradicted by two rather unfriendly and dogmatic Russian works.

Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet Suite No 2, with a particularly dark and intense performance of Dance of the Knights, was coupled with Shostakovich's October: an uncompromisingly joyless statement composed for the 50th anniversary of the 1917 Revolution, loaded with repressed agitation.

It was therefore brave to use David Horne's new percussion concerto Ignition as the second half. Certainly many came primarily to hear soloist Evelyn Glennie, whose virtuosity and versatility provided considerable sonic and visual interest. The music was less easy to absorb. Its five "movements" were mood pictures. "Energetic", "Lively, capricious", and "Turbulent" lived up to their descriptions due to suitably noisy woodblocks and drums. The subtle vibraphone and xylophone atmospheres in "Utterly calm" and "Tranquil" provided an activated contrast.

Horne's greatest skill in Ignition is his seamless integration of phrases, each new idea blending from existing sections thanks to an exhaustive arsenal of scoring techniques. Many soloists from the RLPO shared the limelight with Glennie, not least four additional percussionists. Schwarz gave Ignition a neatly executed performance, but the music's dominant impression is one of self-importance.

Taken in isolation, each item on this programme was finely played and sensibly directed. Yet the ingredients combined uncomfortably. It was difficult to identity cohesive artistic strategy - not enough real variety for the evening to be classed as an orchestral showcase, half of it sufficiently obscure to avoid the "lollipop" tag, too traditional to be truly modernist, and with unbalanced subject matter lacking a conceptual theme.