Bournemouth SO / Kreizberg, The Concert Hall, Lighthouse, Poole

Mozart on a high, Bruckner on a low

What happens when an orchestra's previous principal conductor makes a return visit? The Russian-born American Yakov Kreizberg had charge of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra for five years, until 2000, on his way up in an international career that has probably still to peak.

Now that Marin Alsop – also American, but a much more "touchy-feely" conductor – has been in post for a few months, her approach has already started to take style, technique and repertoire rather a long way from the more autocratic, hard-core classical manner of her predecessor.

On this visit, Kreizberg – still the wiry, wired maestro – typically put his soloist first, and did much to help Stephen Kovacevich make something typically special out of Mozart's C minor Piano Concerto, K491. Kovacevich's solid and severely classical style, favouring faster speeds than some of his pre-period-instrument colleagues, chimes in perfectly with Kreizberg's approach. The weight of his tone as well as the way in which he slows down at critical moments remains firmly in line with the great tradition from which he comes.

Yet the great thing here was that you always felt that the music was being recreated and reconsidered. The second movement's opening solo was limpidly etched, and in the finale Kovacevich offered the occasional wicked hint of ornamentation.

If the first movement revealed some tussle between soloist and orchestra about speed, Kreizberg's reduced band, and his woodwind section in particular, revelled in Mozart's glorious orchestration. I wish that he had got further with his planned exploration of the Haydn-Mozart-Beethoven repertoire when he was at the BSO's helm.

It was bold to offer Bruckner's Ninth Symphony with an orchestra that, despite improvements in its string section, lacks the heft to underpin this symphony's long spans. The full orchestra, too, suffered periodic bouts of poor intonation, and strident brass spoiled many of the climaxes.

The pauses between Bruckner's lengthy paragraphs failed not only to resonate in the unflattering acoustic of the BSO's home but also, despite all Kreizberg's efforts, to sound as though the symphonic thinking behind this monster of a three-movement work was being carried forward in the way that it should be.