Downtown, the young elite of Liverpool were scouring the shops for scary Hallowe’en clothes. Up on the hill, Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic — such a crackerjack combination — delivered their own thrills soberly dressed. Prokofiev’s Seventh Symphony concluded Thursday’s bill, and movements two and four were superb. Playing was precise and passionate: not uncommon virtues. But a family feeling among orchestras is rare, and it was this spirit that helped the musicians to glide so suavely around Prokofiev’s mercurial final symphony.

The other movements weren’t far behind in glory. Gay became garish. The disarming turned sardonic. And every colour hit home, from twinkling tinkles to the woodwinds’ songs of regret. Wisely, Petrenko used the composer’s thoughtful original coda, not the breezy gallop tacked on to please his Soviet masters. When Petrenko has finished recording Shostakovich’s symphonies on Naxos, may we have a Prokofiev set?

Alas, the rest of Thursday’s concert had less sparkle. The Latvian violinist Baiba Skride launched Sibelius’s Violin Concerto attractively with a whispering half-tone, gradually picking up decibels during the music’s long, yearning breath. But later, little misfortunes arrived — infelicities of pitch that might have passed unnoticed if her playing had greater personality.

Smaller pickings, too, from the first complete performance of the world’s first symphony to be inspired by lumps of magnetic crystals. This was Symphony: Magnetite, by the talented 29-year old Liverpudlian, Emily Howard.

Seeking inspiration from scientific or natural phenomena has become a fashion for contemporary composers. The risk lies in generating music cleverly coloured, but structurally wilting or opaque. The tentative opening was terrific, the sounds feeling their way as if just born. But, farther on, it was hard to sense magnetic forces pushing and pulling Howard’s thematic strands. And her happy knack for orchestral writing led her into excess: too many floated textures punctured by percussive pings; too many sustained notes amplified through a crescendo.

Petrenko’s forces gave the work the care and clarity that its craftsmanship and ambition deserved. Sturdier music will no doubt come from Howard in the future.

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