Having opened their season with a memorable Haydn Creation, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra closed it with Haydnesque Beethoven under their principal guest conductor-elect, Olari Elts. Beethoven's First Symphony is often compared to Haydn's work, but the common factor here wasn't the music so much as the manner of performance.

The presence of a standard-size SCO, augmented only by a couple of necessary extra horns, ensured this was a pared-down, classical take on Beethoven. But it was Elts's idiosyncratic approach that made the most impact. The Estonian conductor has a podium manner that could be described as mildly eccentric. He is not one to conduct each and every beat; instead, baton-less, he employs a range of expressive - at times almost pictorial - gestures to communicate with the orchestra. At one stage during the First Symphony, this involved adopting a casual pose, holding the rail at the back of the podium with one hand while gesturing conversationally to the first violins with the other.

It looked unconventional but was undeniably effective. Elts's Beethoven was uptempo, in the manner of many a modern-day historicist performance, but never hurried. Here, speed, spaciousness and clarity of detail went hand in hand. Elts revelled in the work's potential for dramatic soft-loud contrasts, bringing out a Mozartian, operatic element to Beethoven's music; this was particularly effective in the seldom-heard cantata, Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage. For the most part, the SCO Chorus coped well with the extremes of dynamic the piece demands.

This was vibrant, elegant Beethoven that speaks well for Elts's tenure with the orchestra. It was marred only in the Mass in C by a quartet of soloists whose operatic inclinations were completely at odds with his vision of the music, and who seemed to belong to another performance altogether.