He normally sits at the conductor's left hand, but at the latest Philomusica concert the orchestra's leader, John , sprung on to the podium and took charge. Opening with Schubert's Symphony No 8, the Unfinished, it rapidly became apparent that Georgiadis likes a large scale, romantic sound - much more Vienna Philharmonic than English Baroque Soloists. Not surprising, perhaps, when you remember that he was leader of the London Symphony Orchestra for 14 years.

As a man who must have sat at the feet of many a self-aggrandising, flashy maestro in his time, it was fascinating to see that Georgiadis himself needed to employ only the bare minimum of gestures to keep the orchestra on track, and to draw out the interpretation he wanted. Beginning the Schubert symphony with feather-light strings (and thereby testing out players who are normally his colleagues), he unfolded the music with leisurely, but firmly measured tread. This meant that there was time for us to savour every melody, and each instrumental solo. Georgiadis also reminded us that this symphony is clearly related in orchestral sound texture to the great Ninth Symphony, composed three years later. As in all good performances of the eighth, you were left in the lurch, longing to know what Schubert would have come up with in the remaining movements.

"This is a dream come true. I get a good orchestra, and I get to do Bruckner Four," John Georgiadis told me enthusiastically in an Oxford Times interview. He also told me of the conductor Jascha Horenstein, who in a concert with the LSO stopped the symphony a whole section too early. No danger of that with Georgiadis, even though he conducted this massive work without a note of music in front of him. You could see how Horenstein could make such a mistake, however - Bruckner was not a man to let a good idea surface only once when he could repeat it several times. Again Georgiadis judged his tempos, and his crescendos (which came complete with some spot-on brass playing) to perfection, with the symphony finally sailing majestically into harbour like a giant liner.