City of London Sinfonia/Hickox, Barbican, London

Benjamin Britten's Albert Herring, his second chamber opera, after The Rape of Lucretia, is usually praised for its witty parody, in which the representative characters of a Suffolk market town are portrayed in lightly drawn take-offs of past styles. They're not literal enough to be pastiche, and much of the first act is typical of Britten in using the baldest elements of scales and common chords, which give it an air of cynical detachment. Act II displays more musical invention, though it is still of striking clarity. The opening horn calls outlining major chords, answered by tuneless woodwind flurries, set up a frisson of expectancy. Florence Pike's berating of Sid for arriving late for the May Day preparations is a tour de force, and the set piece in which Miss Wordsworth rehearses the children for their festive song over a fast waltz accompaniment is a breathtakingly clever composition.

Cleverness was precisely what early critics disliked about Britten until the tide of opinion turned in his favour. But Mrs Herring's lament for Albert, presumed dead, with its slowly drooping grace notes, and the gentle, dirge-like ensemble over shifting chords are brilliantly effective in fixing a mood before it is shattered by the renegade's return. And it shows impressive resourcefulness to save the amplest melody – arching on unison strings like, though not too like, something in Verdi – as the backdrop for Albert's double defiance, first of Lady Billows, then of his mum.

When I last saw Albert Herring, it seemed rather cosy, owing to a conventional production that took the edge off the music. The concert performance on Tuesday exposed the virtues of the opera, with just enough comings and goings to clarify its situations, the cast lined up in front of the small band from the City of London Sinfonia under Richard Hickox.

And some cast it was. James Gilchrist may have looked too grown up for Albert and seemed much too intelligent in Act I. But once he had donned his boater and orange-blossom wreath as the May King, he warmed to the character, and sang flawlessly. Anne Collins was a natural as his mother. Susan Bullock was a bit too young for Lady Billows, but squawked with upper-class stridency, and Sally Burgess judged the part of her housekeeper Florence Pike with intelligence and sobriety.

Rebecca Evans as Miss Wordsworth compensated for her youth by providing a caricature, but her children, Yvette Bonner, Rebecca Bottone and Gregory Monk were absolutely brilliant. Alan Opie was obsequious and unctuous, Stephen Richardson cut a more handsome and sonorous figure than usual as Superintendent Budd, while Robert Tear had something of the night about him as the Mayor. Pamela Helen Stephen and Roderick Williams as Nancy and Sid made an ideal lad-and-lass couple. The BBC was in attendance, so look out for the broadcast.