Beethoven has been the mainstay of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra's autumn programme, in particular the piano concertos. Stephen Kovacevich has played all five with the SCO and its principal conductor Joseph Swensen, and they ended their cycle last week with the Emperor Concerto.

Whether in the solo piano works or the concertos, Kovacevich's Beethoven is always direct and truthful. He has never gone out of his way to cultivate a beautiful tone; that slightly raw-edged lack of fuss seems to have become more pronounced over the years. From the opening flourish of the Emperor, he was vividly assertive, then kept his approach simple and hymn-like in the Adagio and managed the transition to the athletic finale with the minimum of fuss and the maximum of poetry. Not everything in Kovacevich's playing was immaculate, but the sense of line and musical purpose were so consistently clear that the odd scrambled detail never seemed remotely significant.

Swensen was a watchful, considerate partner in the concerto, the climax of an all-Beethoven programme that also contained the third of the Leonora Overtures and the overture that was finally included in his opera Fidelio. The performances had plenty of energy, though not so much a sense of live theatre.

The orchestral playing was uniformly first rate - the SCO certainly has some highly accomplished soloists among its wind players - but there was always the sense that this was Beethoven viewed from an 18th-century perspective, being made to conform to a classical frame work, rather than being presented as music that was incipiently romantic and already testing the expressive boundaries of such conventions.

The concert had begun with Swensen reverting to his former trade, as violin soloist in the two Romances, Op 40 and 50, in which he floated a pristine, silvery line over discreet accompaniments; his rapport with his orchestra certainly brings dividends.