As a composer, Matthias Pintscher’s music is meticulous, economical and cerebral. As a conductor, his approach is similar. The results can be striking when he hones an entire orchestra into one incisive, pristine gesture, but in this all-French programme with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, he kept the ardent flux of the music too much at arm’s length. Pintscher tends to think about his music in visual terms; here his gaze felt clinical and uninvolved.

Given the passion of the repertoire, it made for a frustrating evening. Fauré’s Pelléas et Mélisande suite sounded well blended, well behaved and impersonal – there was none of the score’s discreet sensuality or the eerie mystery of Maeterlinck’s play, for which Fauré composed his incidental music. Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique unfolded not with heart-wrenched longing, but raised-eyebrow knowing – it was almost a callous “I told you so” to the love-crazed protagonist. The opening was refined, the waltz swirled with straight-backed suavity. Where was the romance? The orchestral playing was impressively tight and the cold discipline of the March to the Scaffold created a bracing kind of vigour. But even the raucous blast of the Witches’ Sabbath seemed neat and calculated. Pintscher never let down his guard.

In Saint-Saëns’s fifth piano concerto, also known as the Egyptian, Javier Perianes clinched the score’s weird balance of crisp classicism and pseudo-exotic whimsy. The Spanish pianist has a bright touch, breezy virtuosity and a knack for arresting intimacy in quiet passages that earned a huge cheer from the audience. Earlier, the famous Sicilienne of the Fauré suite featured glowing, earthy solos from the BBCSSO’s principal flute, Rosemary Eliot. This was her final concert after nearly 32 years with the orchestra, during which time she’s been one of its signature sounds. Her colleagues paid emotional tribute at the end of the concert. She’ll be missed.