Philharmonia / Norrington, Royal Festival Hall, London

Lucky (or very wise) was the large audience that crowded into the Royal Festival Hall on Saturday night, escaping Christmas revellers and the inclement weather. The Philharmonia of late has been dogged by sickness on the podium. But this concert, with Sir Roger Norrington at the helm, was all confidence and joy.

It began on Norrington's home turf: Berlioz's youthful overture to Benvenuto Cellini. Scoreless, Norrington underlined the extraordinary colourings – bare pizzicato strings against bleak winds – which even today sound so contemporary. Norrington playing the coquette – both wise and wily – wooed the wind and fanned the brass. Phew, what a curtain raiser!

But the next piece was the real curio. Double concertos are thin on the ground (apart from the Baroque ones) but Bruch's Double is a real novelty, the only one of its kind: a concerto for viola and clarinet. The origins of this work seem murky; the two soloists – Isabelle van Keulen and Michael Collins – admitted in their lively pre-concert talk that they had no idea how the work came to be written or for whom. The programme note suggests that it dates from just before the First World War, but on "blind listening" the ear would firmly place it mid to late 19th century, no problematic chromaticism or complicated rhythmic idea ruffling the surface.

Bruch was a great friend of Brahms, but Brahms was so much more progressive. How Bruch could remain so sonically cocooned (and in Berlin!) is thoroughly mysterious. But the piece is utterly charming, its only quite serious problem the order of the movements. It's in three movements as organised, but starts with two slow movements, one virtually an extension of the other. The viola and clarinet are similar in soulfulness and it seems bizarre (and acoustically perilous) to score for these two instruments together as soloists.

Yet with a "classical" orchestral line-up, the soaring, lyrical lines of Collins and van Keulen cut through without difficulty. The fast final Allegro with opening brass fanfare skipped along with almost Mendelssohnian agility, the husband-and-wife team tastefully revelling in this time-warp music. The audience was so enraptured that the second movement was repeated. But let's have the whole piece again soon.

After something so unusual came something well known. But with the strings playing without vibrato, the tempi fresh, tremendous rhythmic vitality and razor-sharp clarity, Dvorak's New World sounded very new indeed. Norrington (again scoreless) radiated nervous energy and visceral involvement. The wind and brass were on top form. A hugely enjoyable concert.