Michael Collins (clarinet), Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra/Jβnos Rolla

Chamber Symphony Op 110a - Shostakovich/Barshai

Piano Concerto No 2 - Beethoven

Clarinet Quintet (arr for orchestra) - Weber

Symphony No 40 - Mozart

Twenty years ago, the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra of Budapest was one of the most exciting around. If its playing on Tuesday is anything to go by, it may be suffering a bout of academyitis, tempted into that comfortable area in the middle of the road that the Academy of St Martin in the Fields has so long made its bland home.

There's nothing serious to cavil at in the playing. The string sound is svelte and softish in attack, the wind playing clear and secure. The concert opened with Shostakovich's Chamber Symphony, Rudolf Barshai's composer-approved string-orchestra arrangement of the Eighth String Quartet. Here the Hungarians revealed their familiar string tone, with its beautifully textured nap. But the shocking juxtapositions within the piece were played down, the overall impact diluted.

Finghin Collins was the polished and well-mannered soloist in Beethoven's Second Piano Concerto, playing with a lightness that suggested he might not be quite sure how far to push for expressive results in what was, after all, the first to be written and is in many ways the most Mozartian of Beethoven's piano concertos.

Michael Collins (no relation), playing as soloist in a string-orchestra arrangement of Weber's Clarinet Quintet, lifted the evening to a higher level, with playing that had the sharpness, wit and agility to bring the most out of Weber's rewardingly idiomatic writing.

The leader, Jβnos Rolla, who directs from the first desk, set briskish speeds in the evening's major work, Mozart's G minor symphony. He secured the sort of internal clarity that a chamber orchestra can so successfully deliver. But there was little of the contrapuntal tension that Mozart so often uses to drive this piece. Here was great music made to sound at once very beautiful and strangely devitalised.