It also stretched a somewhat stereotyped point in seeking to contrast the jazzy, folksy energies of Gershwin and Copland against the inspired but more decadent lushness of the two Europeans on show, Korngold and Richard Strauss.

Had any of the European revolutionaries Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Berg or Webern been featured Tuesday night's chosen theme might have lurched in a completely different direction.

But that would have meant fewer good, decadent tunes. And less chance to enjoy - what a pleasant surprise! - the talents of a little-known conductor who was perfectly suited to his material.

Brazilian Roberto Minczuk exudes geniality with his cheeky chappie demeanour but in his opening piece, Copland's Billy the Kid ballet suite of 1938, he nailed trigger-happy Billy down to his lonesome boots with razor-sharp rhythms, devil-may-care humour and pathos all the way from the all-American open prairie melodies to the shootout and Billy's death.

More good humour when he was joined for Gershwin's 1925 Piano Concerto in F by the equally beaming Canadian soloist Stewart Goodyear, an almost-Lewis Hamilton-lookalike and with F1 hands, too.

Gershwin already had several major Broadway musicals to his name, none of them orchestrated by him, when he wrote the concerto – his first 'serious' work.

Minczuk kept the music to its showbiz origins and maintained a strike-up-the-band expectancy from the orchestra while Goodyear combined the cheerful insouciance of a ragtime player with the rivetting precision
of a Hollywood filmset sewing machine.

You would hope to hear a lot more of both musicians.

The timeline inched backwards to 1918 and the old world with Korngold's charming Much Ado About Nothing suite written for a Vienna theatre production. Impeccably played again and then on to Richard Strauss's Rosenkavalier Suite, in essence a bundle-up medley from his ever-popular bitter-sweet 1911 opera.

Minczuk lost some clarity but delivered nonetheless. In the end, however, it was the stripped-down Americans what won it.

Trevor Willis