Royal Liverpool Philharmonic/Petrenko

Arguably the most significant centre of European and Russian composition in the 1930s and 40s was New York. ­Vasily Petrenko's enthralling programme ­featured three musical exiles in the new world: Paul Hindemith, Béla Bartók and Sergei Rachmaninov, whose work was both passionately nostalgic and newly invigorated by the jazz age. Despite its dusty title, Hindemith's Symphonic Metamorphoses of Themes by Weber is a playful pot-pourri of exotic flavours. At its heart is a strain of ersatz Orientalism developed from Weber's material for an early version of ­Turandot. But it also incorporates ­Hindemith's enthusiasm for the big bands of the era, and Petrenko created a swinging impression of Benny ­Goodman on a tour of China. Bartók's third piano ­concerto was written during a brief ­respite from his battle with leukaemia, and is buoyed with a ­heartbreakingly fleeting optimism. The Korean ­soloist Kun-Woo Paik brought a serene ­presence to the keyboard, yet added jazzy flourishes to the east European roulades of the first movement that ­suggested Bartók may have lent half an ear to the music of Gershwin. Few would call Rachmaninov a jazz composer, yet the Third Symphony places greater emphasis on ­syncopation than the lush romanticism of his ­earlier work. There are points at which it becomes intoxicatingly over-rich, like devouring a box of liqueur chocolates all at once; but Petrenko presented it as a sorrowful song of exile, rooted in the incantatory monotone of the Russian Orthodox church. Liverpool has embraced Petrenko as one of its own, but he's never better than when absorbed with thoughts of home.