It could have been a radical fusion of lighting, music, and drama, a Gesamtkunstwerk of our times, but the Britten Sinfonia's staged performance of Deirdre Gribbin's violin concerto, Venus Blazing, proved to be a false dawn. Played by violinist Ernst Kovacic, the piece is based on the idea of Venus both as planet and iconic beauty. Gribbin herself appeared on stage to introduce the work, cast as an ethereal Venusian being, but she was lumbered with a hairdo that was more Shockheaded Peter than ET. This was the pseudo-theatrical overture to a performance in which the hyperactive lighting and planetarium-like backdrop all contrived to diminish the impact of Gribbin's music.

Jeff Ravitz's lighting design had all the subtlety of a teenage disco. In the first movement, the conflict between Kovacic and the other players was realised by a gratuitous ejaculation of red and blue lights. For the most part, the lighting achieved the paradoxical result of casting most of the performers in darkness. The serene second movement was played in front of a panorama of twinkling stars, and the folksy finale brought forth another explosion of red and blue. It all emphasised the least effective quality of Gribbin's piece - its gestural superficiality - and made the music a glib accompaniment to an inferior stage show rather than a piece in its own right.

In the first half, James MacMillan's recorded voice read poems that inspired his works The Road to Ardtalla and I (A Meditation on Iona). The pieces were played in front of a glass sculpture of a kelp frond and a projected image of Highland bleakness; nothing was added to the effect of the music, apart from clouds of dry ice that must have made it impossible for the players to see conductor Pierre-André Valade. Just as in the Gribbin, the staging seemed to be trying too hard, over-compensating for the weaknesses of the music.

· At Warwick Arts Centre (0247 652 4524) tonight. Then touring.