Schoenberg's Violin Concerto is reputedly one of the most difficult ever written - but Hilary Hahn showed she may be the safest pair of hands in the violin-playing world today.

Her performance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Peter Eotvos began in a mood of chamber-music-like intimacy, and ended with a third movement that had the same springy, freewheeling momentum as the finale of a conventional romantic barnstormer. Meanwhile, Hahn's left hand leapt up and down the strings with unerring accuracy. More than that, though, there was a sense of shape to her playing that turned a score that could be for some the epitome of squeaky-gate modernism into something by turns lyrical and playful.

If there was a flaw it was that even Hahn's focused, high-tension tone didn't always ride over the orchestra. But her Bach encore - the Andante from the solo Sonata No 2 - provided an opportunity for unhindered introspection. In this, the violin plays simultaneously the melody and its simple, pulsing accompaniment, and the calm beauty of each line was so unruffled by the effort of playing the other, you might have thought there were two Hahns on stage.

Her playing was the high spot of an otherwise lacklustre performance. The opening of Wagner's Siegfried Idyll didn't find the strings ideally poised, and the Concerto for Orchestra by Bartok, usually so vivid, came to life fully only in its fourth movement.

Currently without a chief conductor, this orchestra badly needs a galvanising figure on the podium. Maybe Jiri Belohlavek, who takes over in July, will be that figure. In any case, they must be counting the days until he arrives.