Joan Tower's Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman is dedicated "to women who take risks and who are adventurous". At the Houston premiere, female members of the American space missions would have sprung to mind - but, exactly 20 years on, it is the prescience of the parallel dedication, to Marin Alsop, that is striking. With Alsop conducting her Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Tower's words served as both citation and testimonial here.

It was typically adventurous Alsop programming that put Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man and Tower's for the Uncommon Woman back to back at the opening of this Colston Hall concert. The brass and percussion instrumentation is all but identical and Tower references Copland, fashioning her piece from one of its thematic ribs. But in terms of character, the fanfares are as different as Mars and Venus, or perhaps Harry and Sally. Tower savours every trilling note, glorying in the final wild explosion of energy.

Hearing these two pieces in close proximity attuned the ear to Beethoven's astute balance of assertively forthright music with the most delicate filigree in the Emperor Concerto. Barry Douglas brought a wonderfully resonant sonority to the moments when Beethoven makes the piano compete with the orchestra on the latter's terms, but the poetic expressiveness was even more subtly communicated. It was the way in which Douglas and Alsop between them reasoned Beethoven's logic, transcending mere heroics, that made this so rewarding.

In Rachmaninov's Second Symphony, Alsop applied similar principles, supporting the work's highly melodic nature with a dynamic drive. Nevertheless, it was indicative of Alsop's honing of the Bournemouth orchestra that the nuances of inflection and instrumentation emerged with such clarity while sustaining Rachmaninov's passion to the forceful end.