Programme building is an elusive art. It is a mystery why some combinations of music make perfect sense even when they have no rationale linking them, while others that ought to fit together fall flat in performance. Whatever the knack is, Thomas Adès has it. The programme he devised for the BBC Symphony could not have been more diverse, yet the concert held together exhilaratingly well.

Adès's conducting style is neither economical nor elegant, but it gets results. It caught the mixture of raw-edged excitement and lighter-than-air lyricism for the overture to Berlioz's unfinished opera, Les Francs-Juges, perfectly, while every fleck of colour and twist of harmony in Sibelius's miraculously compressed masterpiece Luonnotar was precisely registered, and soprano Rebecca von Lipinski handled the demanding setting of the Kalevala text with powerful ease.

The rest of the programme had an American theme. Ives's Orchestral Set No 2 may not be as familiar as its predecessor (better known as Three Places in New England) but it is equally extraordinary, and Adès's detailed handling of the last movement, From Hanover Square North, Ives's sound-picture of New York in the aftermath of the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, had a marvellous sense of perspective and range.

Adès reserved his own music until last. America: A Prophecy, his millenial commission for the New York Philharmonic, a pungent, unsparing condemnation of the evils of colonialism that juxtaposes a Mayan prophecy against the smug Christianity of the conquistadores. Susan Bickley was the superb mezzo soloist - bleaching her tone to conjure hieratic detachment - while the composer ensured every orchestral detail was viscerally intense.