A small Highland spa town isn't the most likely of venues for a new music premiere. But it was rather appropriate in the case of the SCO's latest commission, a work by Stuart MacRae, who was born in Inverness, not half an hour's drive from Strathpeffer. Though Birches was written while the composer was living in Germany, MacRae turned to his native landscape for inspiration: "Whenever I thought of home, I found my head filled with images of the stands of birch trees that spread across the hillsides and streamsides of the Highlands," he writes.

It is a poetic image for what turns out to be a particularly poetic piece from this usually formidable composer. MacRae's idiom is still avowedly modernist, the work of someone at home with the music of Webern and Boulez, but here his rigorous style seems to have mellowed. The intricately layered opening section is music of extreme complexity, but it is also highly evocative. Time and again, MacRae touches on a lyricism not always apparent in his earlier work; the solo oboe being chased with increasing frenzy by pizzicato strings.

Schumann, as conductor Baldur Bronnimann remarked in his introduction, was also considered to be a radical in his day, and certainly his Cello Concerto still has its detractors. The opening movement has been the graveyard of many a respected soloist: too fast and the flowing lyricism is lost; too slow and it becomes laboured. The SCO veered towards the latter, though principal cellist David Watkin carried the performance with the melodious strength of his spun-out line.

It was a persuasive account of an often-overlooked work, as was that of Beethoven's Fourth Symphony - a performance full of energy, atmosphere and well-judged lightness.