Sibelius's concerto in D minor was one of two works with which the violinist Gil Shaham burst overnight onto the music scene in 1989. He was just 18, yet already replacing Itzhak Perlman in London concerts. Sixteen years on, Shaham's combination of virtuoso technique with a deeply expressive instinct still seems perfect for the work and, in this performance with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, he took Symphony Hall by storm.

Shaham's playing had a searing intensity, but it was the irrepressible energy he exuded that brought every note so vividly to life. His tendency to play on the move may be a distraction, but here it had the effect of keeping the audience on their toes: the sheer physicality of the music and its emotional impact were all the more sharply defined and never less than totally involving. However, as he took his bows, clearly delighted, Shaham's concern was to applaud the orchestra - rightly so, since the collaboration with the CBSO and guest conductor Thomas Dausgaard was inspiring.

Dausgaard brings his own brand of dynamism to the podium: he is equally attuned to fine detail and to a score's organic flow. This was particularly evident in the Sinfonia Espansiva, the third symphony of Carl Nielsen, Dausgaard's fellow Dane. The Andante Pastorale's inclusion of two wordless voices (soprano Rachel Nicholls and baritone Jeremy Huw Williams) is unusual and evocative, but it was Dausgaard's overall shaping of the expansive element acknowledged in the composer's title that was so effective here. There was an appropriately Brahmsian sweep to the phrasing - an affinity underlined thanks to Dausgaard's perceptive interpretation of Brahms's Variations on the St Anthony Chorale at the beginning of the programme. And a wonderful sense of momentum was sustained right up to the last bars, where the final statement of Nielsen's characteristic repeated notes is indelibly imprinted in the timpani.