If you’re going to employ tens of extra musicians for Strauss’s gigantic Alpine Symphony, it’s probably just as well that a few other "biggies" are programmed in the same concert. So it was at the Philharmonic Hall, where the Strauss shared the programme with a new orchestration of Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons as well as a selection of Canteloube’s haunting Songs of the Auvergne. All three pieces are evocations of a place or a season, so this whole concert was almost a musical novel or an orchestrated visit to an art gallery.

When the curtain came down on Liverpool’s year in the limelight as European Capital of Culture, back in 2008, there may have been some who thought that the party was over. Things in the city’s arts world were never going to the same, however, and much has changed since 2008, mostly for the better. But there is one institution which, though it’s been through some major changes in its lifetime, is a constant on the Liverpool scene.

While there is, of course, safety in numbers, but five premieres on four continents is, perhaps, a little novel. Tan Dun’s new Concerto for Double-Bass, subtitled Wolf Totem, is a co-commission by five orchestras: the Royal Concertgebouw, St Louis Symphony, the Taiwan Philharmonic, the Tasmanian Symphony and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic.The principal bass player in each orchestra is to be soloist and the piece received its world première last month in Amsterdam.

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.

A monstrous celebration prefaced by thunderous organ chords is always going to be more the Albert Hall’s kind of thing than a comic opera viewed through the wrong end of the telescope. So Strauss’s Festival Prelude kicked off a first half of 150^th birthday celebrations in more appropriate style than last week’s Der Rosenkavalier.

One of the joys of attending an opera in the Concert Room at St George’s Hall, Liverpool, is the feeling that the audience is sitting in the set itself. Now one of the city’s foremost concert venues, this Victorian gem never ceases to amaze, even though it was reintroduced to active use in 2006 after extensive refurbishment. This summer and autumn, much of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic’s musical activity has decamped to the venue as the Philharmonic Hall has closed for a multi-million pound refurbishment and partial rebuild.

With the Albert Dock just a few hundred yards down the road, and Liverpool the launchpad for two centuries of Atlantic crossings, it’s perhaps not too shocking to hear Wagner’s intercontinental Ride of the Valkyries resound round Philharmonic Hall.

The prospect of a new concerto from a largely unknown composer who, it’s safe to say, had never been performed previously in Liverpool may have seemed a little daunting. By the end of the 22-minute world premiere, however, rapturous applause greeted this approachable, tuneful, understated and, above all, gentle work. This was so much the case that it will no doubt be heard again soon.

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ Ninth Symphony, completed in 2012 and heard in London for the first time in this concert, is dedicated to the Queen on her Diamond Jubilee. Those are not words to strike eager anticipation into my heart , though I’m happy to say that being Master of the Queen’s Music doesn’t appear to have dulled the composer’s powers in the way the equivalent title seems to nobble poets. Indeed, the dedication is merely that, and the work is no winsome tribute.