BBCSO/Eotvos/Hahn, Barbican, London <!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->

What refreshing programming! Wagnerian balm, academic Schoenberg, nostalgic Bartok; descriptions that barely touch the works performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the sensitive hands of Transylvanian-born Peter Eotvos, a programme to let the orch estra shine in its newfound confidence, and for a young soloist to astonish in uncommon repertoire.

If the string opening of Wagner's Siegfried Idyll was a little tarnished, this was about the only blemish of the evening. Famously, this work was written as a birthday present for Wagner's wife. The chamber ensemble version is most often heard, but how the fuller strings enrich the score, and how well the BBCSO strings are playing! Eotvos could so easily have allowed the piece to wallow in its luxuriance, but he kept it moving, deliciously allowing it to ebb and flow.

Live performances of Schoenberg's violin concerto are very rare. One wonders how this one, with the young Hilary Hahn, came about. Did she suggest it? One critic observed to Schoenberg that it needed a six-fingered violinist. The technical challenges are almost absurd - huge multiple-stoppings, mixing of harmonics and stopped notes at speed, scampering left-hand pizzicati - and music must be made.

Hahn ate it for breakfast, her presence modest, her confidence awe-inspiring - and she was playing by heart. This was no fight between soloist and instrument; on the contrary, not a harsh note was sounded, everything stunningly under control. But this is rigorous serialism, where rhythms and harmony appear to go nowhere. Her integration with the orch-estra was notable: she was hearing everything, the little sub-waltzes, the march - a team player.

To prove its good heart, the orchestra ended with a white-hot rendition of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra. Eotvos is a lightning conductor not only to Bartok, but Schoenberg too; the same tenderness, rigour and attention to detail were present in both. But how much more he got out of Bartok's contrapuntal writing, the astonishing instrumental colouring, the bucolic village-band, the melancholy, with electrifying playing from the brass, horns and principal winds.