Amid this city's celebrity hoopla and visiting luminaries, you wouldn't blame the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra for feeling ever so slightly taken for granted.

That said, the fullish house on Sunday afternoon at the Dome made their appreciation abundantly evident. Rightly so: under the baton of Barry Wordsworth, the resident talent tackled Mozart's supernal melody, Beethoven's fierce phrasing and Schumann's ardent lyricism with intelligence and panache.

The visitor on this occasion was the pianist Evelina Puzaite. The 29-year-old Lithuanian arrived in the city garlanded with honours and briskly set about proving each one was richly deserved.

She tackled Beethoven's Piano Concerto in C Minor with a style at once sensuous and cunning. The composer's cadenza for this piece demands a tenacious grip on the dynamics of the piano, ranging from the tempestuous to the barely audible.

In Ms Puzaite's hands, it was like looking at a Turner painting -- all was light. The arpeggio-ridden coda demonstrated her elastic sense of rhythm and earned her fervid applause from the audience -- and an impromptu bunch of flowers from one admirer in the stalls.

The powerful performance was bookended by a Mozart overture and a Schumann symphony.

You'd have to have the mind of a murderer to mangle The Magic Flute and Mr Wordsworth is no ham-fisted strangler. The overture was delivered with grace and ease, introducing us to the blithe spirit that stood at Beethoven's shoulder when he composed his third concerto.

Schumann is too often soporific. Not this time -- the homage to the Rhineland was heartfelt.