London Mozart Players, St John's, Smith Square , London

Goethe's historical drama Egmont inspired one of Beethoven's most cogent overtures. But the rest of the incidental music he wrote for the play is a rarity, and was revived by Andrew Parrott conducting the London Mozart Players on Wednesday in the first of three autumn concerts with a dramatic element.

Simon Callow's commentary, written by Yuri Rasovsky, was a good deal less overblown than you might have expected, and he delivered Egmont's prison soliloquy against its orchestral setting (the once popular form of "melodrama") in a very restrained way. The first of the four orchestral entr'actes is a highly varied and dramatic piece – vintage Beethoven – but the greatest pleasure came from two songs for the self-sacrificing Claerchen. The first is a strong martial number, "Die Trommel gerühret", the second a short idealistic song. They were sung with unaffected purity by the 24-year-old Cora Burggraaf, now studying in this country, whose soprano voice is like clear spring water.

Beethoven composed the overture and incidental music to Egmont five years after the first version of Fidelio (or Leonore, as it was originally called), and Egmont's subject, linking love and liberty, has a lot in common with the opera. It's certainly worth performing occasionally, but it probably doesn't include enough really striking music to justify more, at least not in its entirety.

The concert began with Andrew Parrott conducting an arrangement for wind ensemble (with string bass) of Mozart's Fantasia in F minor, K608. It's usually heard on the organ, and sometimes on two pianos, though Mozart wrote it originally for a clockwork instrument, a sort of barrel organ, whose tootling sounds he said he disliked. Yet the Fantasia's outer movements, which are an impressive pastiche of the style of a Baroque French overture, are as passionate and thrilling as they are concise, while the middle section, unfortunately, is Rococo music at its most saccharine.

Whatever instrument, or instruments, the Fantasia is played on, it's very hard to unify the pompous introductory bits with the fugal sections that follow them: a gear-change seems to be implied, which hardly anyone manages convincingly. Andrew Parrott ignored the problem, which didn't make it go away, for the pompous bits were uncomfortably fast. As for the arrangement, the sound of a squawking oboe on top was ugly, though a basset horn in the central movement was effective. Apart from that, the performance didn't yield much in the way of dynamic contrast until a modest crescendo before the peroration.

Though less problematic, Schubert's Fifth Symphony – a model of Classical grace and charm – was played without any sign of affection and with as little character as you'd expect from a humdrum run-through.

There will be two further LMP concerts at St John's, Smith Square, London on 6 Nov & 17 Dec (020-7222 1061)