One by one, Liverpool's most famous sons are returning for its year as European Capital of Culture. The procession forms a sort of ascending musical scale. Ringo Starr launched the year. Then Paul McCartney played at Anfield (songs, I mean, not in central midfield). And now Simon Rattle is back - last month with his Berlin Philharmonic; and here conducting the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, which he first directed as a precocious local lad 33 years ago. In between these concerts he has received the freedom of the city and spoken fondly of his Merseyside childhood and how much he still loves the place. “The moment I get off the train and hear the accent, I'm sold,” he declares.

It would be churlish to wonder how many times Rattle has got off a Liverpool train since fame and Berlin beckoned. Better to revel in the emotional homecoming that was this RLPO concert. Not only did he conduct a wonderfully passionate and cogently shaped account of Sibelius's Fifth Symphony - the very piece with which he made his debut in this hall in 1975 - he also gave us amateur psychologists a field day with his choice of music for the first half.

First came Simon's Ferry Across the Mersey - sorry, Siegfried's Journey to the Rhine - from Wagner's Ring. That's a piece, of course, in which a fearless young hero sets out to do great deeds in the wider world. Then came the premiere of Brett Dean's Songs of Joy (from the Australian's forthcoming opera, Bliss), in which a jaded fortysomething has a midlife crisis and leaves home and family. No connection there, then. And finally came Siegfried's Funeral March: that glorious apotheosis of a lifetime's triumphs and tribulations.

All very symbolic? Well, only Rattle can tell us that. What can be said is that, apart from a few nervous early moments and some dodgy tuning in the Wagner tubas, it inspired the RLPO to some splendidly spirited playing. And Dean's songs - eerily atmospheric or punchily sardonic in Kurt Weill style - strike me as the best things he has written. Setting pungent lyrics by Amanda Holden (based on Peter Carey's novel), and superbly sung by the baritone Peter Coleman-Wright, they made me eager to hear the whole opera when it has its premiere in 2010.

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