Usually in the interval an orchestra takes liquid refreshment. Not here. Before Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony the wind division stayed put to practise their tricky, angular lines. After a while the brass joined in, followed by most of the strings. Even before the symphony started, you knew that the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic were going to end the season's opening concert by scorching your ears.

The musicians hadn't performed the work before: one reason for their labours. Clearly, another was the blond bombshell Vasily Petrenko, who has galvanised the orchestra into glory in his two years as principal conductor. In hasty or neurotic hands, Prokofiev's Fifth can become a wartime blunderbuss, but Petrenko's supremely intelligent reading avoided overkill by subtly grading its dynamics and stressing the music's long lyric breaths, never far from the surface. Had he jacked up every fortissimo, the first movement could never have peaked with such dark weight and grinding power. The orchestra's sweat and dedication, meanwhile, paid off in lethally sharp ensemble playing and a triumphant colour range, with no hint of the garish. An incandescent performance.

Before the interval, Beethoven's Piano Concerto No 2, with Paul Lewis, didn't quite soar to the same level. As usual, Lewis avoided grandstanding gestures: he just sat, calm and centred, and played. The drama instead lay in his fingers, in the adagio's Q & A exchanges, so tenderly phrased, in the finale's lively attack, and the first movement's sparkling divagations. Was the overall effect still too cool? A trifle. But the moderate temperature certainly helped the orchestra, light and bouncy, to show off their classical profile.

All change again in Graven Image by Kenneth Hesketh, a work premiered six weeks ago at the Proms. Here the RLPO became the consummate contemporary specialists, expertly weaving through this musical “memento mori”, volatile in form and emotion, but with funereal bells at its sombre heart. Striking, yes; but a minnow next to the orchestra's Prokofiev.

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