Events to mark the 50th anniversary of the death of Jean Sibelius proliferate over the next couple of months, but the City of Birmingham Symphony's tribute is short and sweet, and began on the anniversary itself. Contained in three concerts, Sakari Oramo's cycle of the symphonies opens his farewell season with the orchestra he has guided as music director for the past 10 years.

The opening concert was also dedicated to the memory of Russell Johnson, the acoustician responsible for giving Symphony Hall the finest sound of any auditorium in the country, and who died last month. Oramo's account of the Fourth, the least forgiving of Sibelius's works, was unflinchingly direct, refusing either to mitigate the bleakness or to twist the emotional screw even tighter; the climaxes of the slow movement and the finale, where Sibelius seems to be struggling to hold the shards of his musical language together, were the more shattering for it. After that, the First Symphony seemed invitingly luxuriant and romantic, but again perfectly combined objectivity with well-judged dramatic pacing.

There was also a UK premiere - if not quite the rediscovery of a long-lost Sibelius cello concerto that the title, Three Symphonic Pieces for Cello and Orchestra, suggested. It was a pleasant enough sequence of Oramo's devising, in which an early cello-and-piano piece, Malinconia, had been orchestrated by Jouni Kaipainen to precede the Two Pieces Op 77, which Sibelius himself had arranged for cello and orchestra. None of the music is top drawer, so the point of the exercise escaped me, though the playing of soloist Martti Rousi was eloquent and refined.

· Further concert on Wednesday. Box office: 0121-780 3333.