As the Aldeburgh festival drew to a close, the appearance of its artistic director, Thomas Adès, as composer, pianist and conductor within the space of 27 hours, was a reminder of the sheer force of his musical personality. At 34, he is now the same age as Benjamin Britten was when he founded the festival. Discussions about comparable precocity and genius will doubtless be ongoing.

Adès programmed two Russian epics for his closing concert with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, suggesting that the two decades separating Stravinsky's Rite of Spring from Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony hardly constitute a gulf and that there were similarities in the way each composer marshalled material. But it was his perception of the common element of sacrifice - with Stravinsky the perpetrator of a rite and Tchaikovsky perceiving himself as victim, of society - that seemed to fuel Adès interpretation. A fierce energy characterised this Rite, though the CBSO needed all their self-righting instincts in some dicey moments.

It was the raw, wild quality that Adès brought to the Tchaikovsky that connected it directly to Stravinsky. He may have been heavy handed with fine details, but a driving compulsion was always present. In the dark inevitability of the very last bars, Adès' logic was most convincing.

Isolation was the theme of Adès' recital with tenor Ian Bostridge, with Stravinsky's setting of Lear's The Owl and the Pussycat as a sort of celebrated love island to counter the angst of Beethoven, Wolf and Schubert. Too often, the almost studied self-consiousness of Bostridge's delivery was a barrier to any deep emotional insight, but the strength of their partnership was underlined in Schubert's Am Meer and Der Doppelgänger which were quite beautifully executed.