When it comes to producing ethereal, whispered intimacies, pianist Dejan Lazic is up there with the best of them. Whether in a faultlessly stated introduction to Beethoven's Piano Concerto No 4 or as a hushed, gently supplicating foil to brusque orchestral statements in the slow movement, Lazic was beyond criticism.

He is better than most and second to very few when needing to breathe life into those moments of grandeur and nobility that make this one of the greatest of all concertos. And Lazic did wonders in evoking the peekaboo insouciance of the finale.

Bombastic vulgarity might have been the hallmark of the cadenzas but they were presented in high style.

Avalanches of deserved applause for Lazic were rewarded with a gently introspective, valedictory utterance from Brahms' last years.

Beethoven's deafness, surely the cruellest fate to befall a composer, and his rising above this dreadful affliction, triggered the writing of Brett Dean's Testament.

Initially, we hear tattered fragments of sound such as eerie pipings, spectral rustlings and simulated moans which suggest despair beyond despair.

Then gradually, the music assumes a sense of harmonic good order and we hear snippets from the composer's Quartet opus 59 No 1, all of which came across as a triumph over adversity.

Catherine McCorkill's flawless contribution on clarinet in Beethoven's Fourth Symphony was like a silver thread through the performance as was the playing of the ladies of the trumpets.

I specially admired the buoyancy that informed the scherzo - and flawless, spring-heeled rapid passagework in the finale brought one of the ACO's most rewarding concerts this year to a most satisfying close.

• CONCERT *

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Perth Concert Hall