BBC Philharmonic, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester; Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool

Inspired committee

Composition by committee isn't to be recommended. But in the case of John Adams – the creation of whose Violin Concerto he describes as a collaboration with not one, or even two, but several violinists – the tactics clearly worked. True, from the rapturous lyricism of the first movement to the hectic finale, the Concerto had a perceptive and persuasive advocate at the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, in Leila Josefowicz, whose musical fluidity and acrobatic agility might have been made for it. With its disconcerting mix of styles and shifting, disarming dialogue between soloist and orchestra, sounding at times like two trains on a collision course, it is a piece that relies on a highly integrated interpretation. Under the conductor Andrew Litton, the BBC Philharmonic's support, though vivid, never stole the spotlight.

The Bergian intensity of the winding central slow movement, called "Body through which the dream flows", was so hypnotic that the audience broke into applause when roused from the dream. "There's more!" Andrew Litton called out cheerfully before plunging into a breathless toccata in which soloist and orchestra – on a garish, minimalist helter-skelter ride (the timpani clearly enjoying the trip) – whirled unstoppably to an abrupt end.

Litton drew equally finely balanced playing in the same concert's opening rarity by another American, Charles T Griffes, whose short life spanned the turn of the last century. The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan was just one of several orientally inspired works and, like the Adams Violin Concerto, this short symphonic poem was also subjected to false starts, delays and changes. Though first conceived for piano before being expanded for orchestra, it is full of impressionistic detail, drawing on a wide palette of colour and texture in its evocation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's drug-inspired vision.

Andrew Litton has a reputation as a Shostakovich interpreter, and his performance of Shostakovich's Symphony No 11 packed a mighty punch. There was no shirking from the portrayal of the appalling events referred to in the symphony's title, The Year 1905, and the occasional rawness added to the immediacy. From the pervasive chill of the glacial opening to the palpable terror of the scherzo and the bullish fervour of the finale, Litton's uncompromising concentration on Shostakovich's colouristic effects lingered long after the last notes had died away. So too, unfortunately, did an irritating phrase or two from all those revolutionary songs churned out here.

In the same way, perhaps, that Litton has presented Griffes to a wider public, the conductor Gerard Schwarz has championed another fellow-countryman, the considerably more prolific David Diamond. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic's account of Diamond's Fourth Symphony didn't reveal a neglected masterpiece but, in a characterful performance in Philharmonic Hall, it proved that, without saying anything very new or revelatory, Diamond is a competent composer whose Fourth Symphony makes a refreshing concert-opener, and a welcome change from, say, Mendelssohn.