This year marks the 150th anniversary of the death of Mikhail Glinka, one of music's greatest innovators, though a problematic figure on a number of counts. Our difficulties with him relate, perhaps, to issues of perspective. He was the first Russian composer to attempt a national idiom, and in so doing changed the course of his country's cultural history. Yet he also trained in Italy and Germany, and one is struck by his apparent over-dependence on western-European formal models. To hear him is often to be vaguely disappointed, as if this most seminal of Russians somehow isn't quite Russian enough.

Vladimir Jurowski's concert with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment highlighted the controversies surrounding Glinka by placing his orchestral fantasy, Kamarinskaya, alongside works by his contemporaries Mendelssohn and Schumann. Russian folk music and rhythms form Kamarinskaya's core, variations and counterpoint its structure. The striking melodies collide with passages of almost baroque precision. "Tasteful" is a word often used to describe Glinka's orchestration. Hearing his music on period instruments reminds us of the raw toughness beneath its gracious surface.

Mendelssohn and Schumann were represented by the Violin Concerto and the Rhenish Symphony, both given high-voltage performances that replaced Romantic introspection with a heightened sense of drama. Violinist Christian Tetzlaff tackled the concerto with operatic intensity, daringly virtuoso in his delivery; and Schumann's evocation of the German landscape surged with vitality. An intelligent, challenging concert, thrillingly performed.