Despite Shostakovich's popularity, most of his film scores - of which there are more than 30 - remain neglected in concert hall and recording studio. Most of the music he wrote for the 1931 film Alone seems destined to remain in the archives: the whole soundtrack lasts more than 70 minutes. Although the five numbers played here worked well as a suite, this is still music more of curiosity value than intrinsic merit, oddly lifeless beneath a veneer of activity.
Consequently, it was a rather disappointing replacement for the scheduled work - Gerard McBurney's reconstruction of the Second Jazz Suite - which was withdrawn without notice or explanation.
The rest of the programme continued as billed and, for every listener who found Leonidas Kavakos's performance of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto a little plain, there is likely to be another who relished its clarity and restraint. Certainly, there have been warmer and more poetic accounts of its first movement, going beyond the notes on the page to explore its nooks and crannies more lovingly. Kavakos chose instead to present a clean text, uncluttered by flights of fancy. This made for a rather drab first movement - even the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra sounded uninspired - but all that changed in the finale, where Kavakos's flamboyance and charm brought everything to life.
It would be unfair to take virtuosity as formidable as this for granted, and the warmth of Kavakos's reception was proof that his Manchester audience was justly dazzled.
Despite fairly regular programming, Skryabin's symphonies and symphonic poems have failed to achieve the kind of popularity enjoyed by those of his Russian contemporaries. They are not easy works to get to know, and those conductors who wallow in their luxuriant textures make comprehension even harder. But in Sinaisky's hands the Second Symphony was refreshingly unconvoluted. Its Straussian second movement was robust and assertive, and even the bombastic finale was played with such glorious conviction that it was irresistible. The slow movement - an intriguing mix of Wagner and Albert W Ketelby - was pure magic.
