The knots on the purse-strings have certainly been untied at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and it was good to hear another world première in less than a week. This time it was the turn of Michael Torke, the composer of Ecstatic Orange and Yellow Pages and a prolific composer of much else besides. But why this piece? There’s a bit of a connection with  “Strawberry Fields Forever”, that iconic Beatles single, and his piece Tahiti was released on CD and recorded by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic’s contemporary music outfit Ensemble 10/10.

Music lovers invariably divide into two factions over the Brahms piano concertos: those who thrill to the elemental D minor and those who prefer to bask in the more reflective charms of the sumptuous B flat Second Concerto. I’m a D minor man myself, secretly convinced that the four-movement Second would prove a far more startling piece if it began with the second movement. But then again it depends who plays it and Lars Vogt with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the London Philharmonic Orchestra seemed to find new dimensions in its extravagant elaborations.

Had the BBC Symphony Orchestra been at full stretch, rather than in the neoclassical and otherwise selective formations of last night’s concert, it might have outnumbered the live audience. Perhaps I exaggerate, but not much; this was never going to be a box-office hit. A big-name soloist might have made a difference. But just about every orchestral principal last night was a star, thanks to the cornucopia of solos in Respighi’s Trittico botticelliano and Strauss’s Suite from Le bourgeois gentilhomme.

Major change is afoot at the Liverpool Philharmonic. The new season has just opened as Philharmonic Hall has been undergoing a major refurbishment and earlier concerts during the autumn were held in the gargantuan acoustics of both cathedrals, where hearing the work being performed is difficult and where comfort for the listener comes at a premium.

Most pianists never truly master one of Brahms’s two piano concertos, those colossal symphonies for soloist and orchestra, let alone both. To present the two in one concert, then, seems foolhardy – and apparently was when András Schiff went for the marathon at the Edinburgh Festival during the Brian McMaster era. No-one expected anything but true majesty, though, when Elisabeth Leonskaja asked to do the same. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra duly obliged, taking up her suggestion of Okko Kamu, a Finnish master I haven’t seen for decades, as conductor.

It has always been obligatory when talking about Steve Martland to describe him as an iconoclast. Before his sudden death in May 2013 at the age of 58, he forged a reputation for himself as a self-styled outsider to the musical establishment, speaking scathingly about the Proms, and eschewing established orchestras and ensembles in favour of writing for his eponymous band. Members of that band joined Colin Currie and the Aurora Orchestra to pay spirited homage to Martland, and place him in his musical context.

It has to be the ultimate cornucopia of choral and early-instrumental invention. So long as the musicians immerse themselves in the beauty of a strange adventure, it doesn’t matter where you hear Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610: however selective the acoustic, you’ll always get something out of one rare combination of sounds or another. The challenge of The Sixteen on their latest tour was never going to be one of communication, only of adapting in the move between cathedrals and concert halls.

Anyone whose affection for Rachmaninov is bounded by the Second Piano Concerto or the Paganini Rhapsody might be surprised to learn that his own favourite work of his was his setting for unaccompanied choir of the Vespers, or All-Night Vigil, of the Russian Orthodox Church. Admittedly he uses the Latin “Dies irae” in the Rhapsody, and the “Blagosloven yesi” from the Vigil does battle with it in his Symphonic Dances. But these are no more than Lisztian self-dramatising pieties.

Even the cold breeze along the Thames played its part in conjuring the chilly, epic Finnish landscapes of Jean Sibelius last night, though Finnish maestro Osmo Vänskä and the perfectly weighted phrasing of the London Philharmonic Orchestra can take primary credit. It’s unusual to have a single-composer programme these days, but Vänskä justified his repertoire with a performance of taut, lyrical and evocative power, which connected and illuminated different areas, historical and generic, of Sibelius’ career.