The Georgian composer Giya Kancheli's Another Step, dating from 1991, made a dramatic beginning to the BBC Symphony's Barbican programme under Vassily Sinaisky. Its opening gesture of threatening drum beats set up a resolute pulse that continued throughout, at times receding deeply into the texture. Taped sounds of tawdry dance music filtered through, as if from a distance; even further away, a solo viola added a note of greater disquiet.

The work's varied materials suggested pages from a film score played without the film. But with its vague sense of structure, this London premiere proved more interesting as a sequence of mysterious events than as a whole.

The second half consisted of the rare Second Symphony by the Russian mystic, Alexander Skryabin, written in 1901. Unlike his mature works, in which his highly idiosyncratic language rose to genuine expressive heights fired by his megalomaniacal self-absorption, in this earlier piece Skryabin's alternation of the languid and the ecstatic struggles to stay airborne. But Sinaisky's utter loyalty to its hedonistic impulses made it a worthwhile experience.

The evening's major success was the performance of Shostakovich's First Violin Concerto, with Sarah Chang as soloist. Despite her contained platform manner, she held nothing back in conveying the lyrical intensity of this exhausting piece. Attacking the lengthy cadenza with a vigour bordering on the reckless cost her bow so much hair that she had to swap with the orchestra's leader in the finale. Not surprisingly, her technically complete reading earned her an ovation from the orchestra, instantly followed by an equivalent reaction from the audience.