This performance of 20th-century American music took its audience from coast to coast, beginning with 1980s John Adams in the west and going back in time to 1950s New York with Bernstein and Ellington. The latter is repertory that the BBC National Orchestra of Wales has explored profitably with Erich Stern, but having the young Estonian New Yorker, Kristjan Järvi, in the driving seat brought a sharp edge to proceedings.

Järvi's parallel involvements with old and new music are reflected in his twin appointments to the Vienna Tonkünstler orchestra and the ensemble Absolute Zero in New York: thus John Adams's Harmonielehre, with its double axes of minimalist technique and the maximal effects of late-19th-century music, was a suitable challenge. After the electrifying reverberation of the opening E minor chords, what came over most strikingly, live in the hall, was the brilliance of Adams's orchestration. Layer upon layer of sound was built up to calculated effect, the percussion cutting through with surgical precision.

The long, lush swathes of slower music were more problematic. In the central movement, The Amfortas Wound, Adams concerns himself with an altogether more troubled inner landscape; here, the trumpet's extended question was eloquently delivered, but Järvi's handling of the string writing was not always totally convincing. Nevertheless, his sweeping gestures embraced the spirit of the finale, and the great wave of climactic sound was exhilarating.

The indefatigable brass section of the BBCNOW went to town in Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, but it was Järvi who was practically dancing in Duke Ellington's Harlem. With big band meeting concerto grosso, and solo instruments swinging cool and crazy against the city hum, this was no genteel afternoon concert, but a full adrenaline high.