Eyebrows were raised when the Philharmonia announced the programmes for its 2005-06 season on the South Bank. Temporarily housed in the Queen Elizabeth Hall while the Festival Hall is redeveloped, orchestras might have been expected to tailor their concerts accordingly and to explore repertoire that required smaller forces. But the Philharmonia seemed determined to carry on regardless, programming its usual mixture of large- and smaller-scale works.

To judge from this concert, though, the orchestra's convictions were entirely the right ones. The experience of a concert in the QEH is different from that in the Festival Hall - with such a perspective it really is surround sound - but no less fascinating or involving. Admittedly, Britten's rarely heard version of the second movement of Mahler's Third Symphony, What the Wild Flowers Tell Me, is an arrangement for "small" orchestra, but that is still a lineup with double woodwind, four horns and a full string section with eight double basses. Yet the sound of Martyn Brabbins's performance never seemed saturated or lacking in spaciousness. The internal detail the close focus revealed was an added bonus.

That spotlight on instrumental detail suited the ballet music from Holst's otherwise forgotten opera The Perfect Fool, extrovertly delivered by Brabbins, and especially the multitude of woodwind contributions in his equally well characterised account of the Enigma Variations. This reinforced an admiration for the expert musicianship of the Philharmonia's principals, as well as for the imaginative doublings in Elgar's textures.

Between these orchestral highlights, Min Lee was the soloist in Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, but it was not so clear that her playing benefited from such close scrutiny. There was something forthright and no-nonsense about her performance that was impressive in one way, but lacking in personality in another; perhaps more distance would have lent more enchantment, or at least a bit more charm.