Cleveland Orchestra Welser-Möst, Usher Hall, Edinburgh

Bela Bartok wrote a piano piece called Night Sounds.

Bela Bartok wrote a piano piece called Night Sounds. In spite of its brevity, it exerted an enormous influence over later music, not only by Bartók himself but also by others. In essence, it abandoned the tradition of the sentimental nocturne to derive its ideas from the tiny noises - creaking, murmuring, rustling, pattering - that are heard in the silence of a rural night.

It is deeply poetic, and you can hear it in the two works of Harrison Birtwistle that were performed by the Cleveland Orchestra under Franz Welser-Möst. The older, and longer, of these is called The Shadow of Night; it dates from 2002. It is based, the composer assures us, on John Dowland's lute air "In Darkness Let Me Dwell", though the title comes from a work by the Elizabethan poet George Chapman. In fact, Birtwistle connects the piece, not with Bartók or with rustic scenery, but with Renaissance ideas of melancholy. You can hear the Dowland tune in this great fresco - its first line, at any rate - but the chief impression is one of hushed stillness, with heavings of the string ensemble like the slow breathing of a sleeper.

The shorter Night's Black Bird is, in fact, the more recent piece - it was premiered in Lucerne only four days previously - but the composer instructed that it be performed first, before its companion. It, too, is related to the Dowland song, which was itself performed between the two orchestral works by the countertenor Andrew Watts, with the lutenist Yair Avidor. Night's Black Bird is even more refined and oblique than The Shadow of Night, though you can hear birdsong on piccolo, animal cries on trumpet, perhaps the scream of a vixen on E flat clarinet. And melancholy, too, as the composer would have us think, since night is an everlasting symbol of spiritual darkness. Both pieces are perfectly achieved; precious diamonds from this exquisite composer.

This was the second of two concerts by the orchestra. The concluding symphony by Schubert, the "Great" C major, demonstrated just how European it now sounds, under its Austrian conductor. The integrated ensemble, the understatement, the easeful tempi, make it sound Viennese rather than American, and indeed this orchestra now gives biennial residencies in the Austrian capital.

The symphony began without bombast, flowing quite naturally into the lilt of the allegro. The second subject was approached with the slightest of expressive breaths, typifing this orchestra's gentle discretion, and the coda ran off smoothly downhill like a stream of water. There was liberal use of sotto voce, notably in the cello tune after the march movement had abruptly broken off. Welser-Möst and his players demonstrate patrician authority; high-quality music-making in a dignified and traditional mould.