There are some violinists who just stun us with their virtuosity -- and that is in fact all they do. With Alina Ibragimova we are on an altogether higher plane, where technique, musicality and intellect all fuse into one, and her performance of the Beethoven Violin Concerto with the CBSO summed all this up wonderfully.

She burrowed into entries and emerged smilingly at the top of each paragraph, in a reading which was indeed one of seriousness and smiles, combining assertive statements with sweet lyricism, her altissimo notes angelically pure. Bowing was expressive, finger-work deftly co-ordinated in this intelligent, highly personal yet always appropriate interpretation of this greatest of violin concertos. Her use of the cadenza Beethoven composed for his own piano transcription was remarkably thought-provoking, abetted by the sensitive timpaning of Erika Ohman.

In fact Ohman's input was only one of many sensitive contributions from orchestral members, not least bassoonist Julian Roberts. Under Vassily Sinaisky's wise, untrammelled batonless direction the orchestral response was honest and direct, and their constant awareness of the soloist's playing was an object-lesson in how to create as rewarding a collaboration as this.

Sinaisky had whetted our appetite with a Schubert Rosamunde Overture where clarity of balance shone through, and this was the chief characteristic of the gripping Tchaikovsky Fourth Symphony which sent us home enriched.

Its fateful aspects were chillingly delivered, but the dreamlike tenderness of the music's musing escapism made a captivating foil in this reading where power and delicacy were always judiciously weighted.

The important woodwind elements were properly eloquent, Ohman's timpanism was again tellingly light in its underpinning, but above all we relished the strings in tremendous form, whether singing sweetly or frisking in pizzicato. What Sakari Oramo started in moulding this tremendously eloquent section, Laurence Jackson has supervised over its consolidation. When he steps down as concertmaster at New Year he is going to be dreadfully missed.