Pianist Hélène Grimaud (pictured) is one of those high-powered musicians who commands attention the minute she appears. There’s no messing about with minute adjustments to piano stools — she just sits down and zips into action. You get the feeling that her whole approach to music making is powerfully self-controlled.

The Schumann piano concerto suits her well. First performed by Schumann’s wife Clara, Grimaud’s performance strongly implied that the concerto was written primarily to showcase Clara’s very considerable technical skills. Grimaud adopted a bright, fiery tone, and very much led from the front — wisely conductor Marios Papadopoulos kept a sharp eye on Grimaud’s hands as he conducted the accompanying Oxford Philomusica orchestra, for it always seemed possible that her energetic technical assurance, and risk-taking approach might lead her to suddenly speed up even further. In contrast, the middle movement was more relaxed, and there was a nice lilt to the finale. This was a bravura performance, albeit not one that displayed much warmth.

The Philomusica began the concert with Rossini’s overture to The Italian Girl in Algiers. Papadopoulos kept the tempo up and the sound light-footed, no mean achievement with a much larger orchestra than normally used for Rossini in an opera house nowadays. There were some sparkling touches from the woodwind soloists.

Meanwhile the Philomusica’s strings got their chance to shine in the concert’s final work, Brahms’s Symphony No 1. Not everyone agrees with me I know, but I was again impressed by the unified string sound the Philomusica now delivers: tight, impassioned playing is vital in Brahms, and the composer was well served here. Also memorable were the second movement violin and horn duet (given a definitely romantic feel), and the solemn trombone chorale in the finale, here all the better for being taken quite slowly. Papadopoulos conducted with a strong sense of the work’s musical architecture, and brought the performance to a really exhilarating conclusion.