Both sections of the orchestra should be sent to winter in Helsinki – that would teach them to be glib about sunrises.Kullervo, on the other hand, was an unqualified triumph. This is very young Sibelius, finding his feet in a huge choral symphony. The repeated rhythms can easily blur and congeal, and the sunrise takes careful engineering. LSO Sibelius Series

Barbican Hall, London
This country has always been fairly loyal to Sibelius, if by “Sibelius” you meant a few of the symphonies and one or two tone poems Things have changed. One expects to see the Barbican filled to capacity for a star soloist in the Violin Concerto. But to see an audience of virtually the same size for two such outlandish rarities as Night Ride and Sunrise and the youthful Kullervo symphony – that was surprising.Why is Night Ride and Sunrise heard so rarely? It’s a glorious work, a repeated springing rhythm gallops through a haunted forest-scape (superbly creepy scoring), and then comes the dawn – weird flickers of light at first, then the full solar warmth But it’s terribly hard to bring off.

The energy tends to be a little generalised with Lazarev (though he predictably raised hell with that side-drum-led jolt into up-tempo at the climax of the first movement). But then that’s not a chord at all, that’s meltdown.Final concert: 7.30pm Wed Hotline: 0171-546 1666. But he kept this satanic brew on the boil and, come the “inquisition” of the finale with trombone glissandi obscenely menacing, the whole terrible apparition threatened to engulf the hall Lazarev even lost his glasses to the final chord. He is the strictest, unfussiest and most galvanising of time-beaters.

A degree more fantasy and nuance in phrasing and dynamics would certainly not go amiss. Not that Lazarev’s inquisitive ear was any less acute than his sense of smell: the dense counterpoint, the monstrous superimpositions, the perversity of the harmonies, dissonance violated with yet more dissonance while ecstatic string lines soar to ever more unattainable heights – these, the essential elements, were exceptionally well attended. The Fifth Piano Concerto – a long and bumpy ride in a very fast machine – initially sounded like someone had left on the handbrake. Surprising given that Nikolai Demidenko, this orchestra and conductor so recently recorded the piece. But fear of stalling inevitably brought forth that extra pump of gas from the well-endowed Demidenko.The Third Symphony – Prokofiev’s opera The Fiery Angel after the exorcism of the voices – almost smells more evil than it sounds. With so much difficult, unfamiliar music on the tariff, apportioning rehearsal time must have been almost arbitrary. A throbbing pulse, a spooky theme, a tender-hearted bass clarinet Almost a contradiction in terms.

And then the elaborations, the distortions begin – the wild, wilful, and wonderful refractions of sound – and who knows where we are Juliet briefly emerges in the guise of an airborne flute. But she is not long for this world.Alexander Lazarev and the London Philharmonic needed more time on this one, more time to make whole that which, by its nature, is so unstable, so transitory. The Andante from Piano Sonata No 4 began life as the slow movement of an apprentice symphony, assumed the ascendancy of the keyboard, and brazened out all threats of extinction with this extraordinary orchestration. This is the Prokofiev we never quite know and love: beauty and the beast in one mind, body, and soul. Last Friday brought us the first London performance of Chout since Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes gave the ballet here in 1921; tomorrow night sees a rare outing for his one-act opera Maddalena.Sunday began with a fleeting glimpse of his youth, his maturity, and an uncertain future all bound up in one single movement. The London Philharmonic has had him pretty well taped over the last week or so.

And with Pioneer the sponsor for this mini-retrospective, they were all but duty-bound to boldly go where your average retrospective would not They did. It was racked with glorious, Foreign Legion-style pain, and it made the tinnitus and the wind-lashed night worthwhile.. LPO Prokofiev Festival

Royal Festival Hall, London
Prokofiev the renegade, the exile, the pretender, the quick-change artist Prokofiev at the movies, the ballet, the opera. Only once did he deliver the 12-bar blues he used to say he was about, and that was the cover of Bobby Bland’s “Ain’t No Love in the Heart of the City” he’s made his very own. But though the hits – “Is This Love?”, “Fool for Your Loving”, “Lovehunter” – did the business, a side order of formula rawk just didn’t stand the test. It was Coverdale’s idea to wind up , and there was a certain “this is who we used to be” feel to proceedings. So, after a few bars of “Slide It In” he delivered a memorable aphorism on safe sex (“don’t be daft, don’t be silly put a snakeskin on your willy”) – and, after “Ready and Willing”, he told someone screaming for Slow ‘n’ Easy, “Oh, fuck off – have some respect for my age”.Of course, age has nothing to do with it: the voice still has a 10-octave range and only Nastassia Kinski lookalike guitarist Adrian Vandenberg could keep up with him for vigour.