The Chamber Orchestra of Europe is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its founding with a "silver jubilee season". The orchestra ranks among the finest in the world, and the opening concert can only be described as a great occasion. The conductor was Philippe Jordan, while the programme consisted of works that examine conflicting views of humanity's relationship with nature. Chabrier's Suite Pastorale and Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony depict man at one with the natural world and awestruck by it beauty. Mahler's Lieder Eines Fahrenden Gesellen takes the contrary stance: man, alienated from nature by the dark complexities of his own psyche, is an existential wanderer upon the face of the earth.

The concert also confirmed Jordan's growing reputation as being among the finest of today's younger musicians. He wears an air of overt stardom, conducting with gestures of balletic grace that occasionally strike you as being self-conscious. His interpretations, however, are radical and exacting. In lesser hands, Chabrier's vignettes of country life are apt to cloy. Jordan turned them into a formidable display of orchestral colour that swept away any ideas of bucolic whimsy. His performance of Mahler's song cycle was rooted in rhythmic dislocation and shifting time signatures, in contrast to many interpreters, who tend to impose uniformities of speed and mood. The soloist was Anne Sofie von Otter, who teased every shred of ironic meaning from Mahler's text.

The Pastoral Symphony, meanwhile, was executed with equal perception and grace, though a couple of horn fluffs intruded upon its perfection. Jordan has a remarkable understanding of the relationship between speed and pace, proceeding slowly in the Andante, for instance, yet at the same time giving the impression of urgency and onward momentum. Romanticism, throughout, was balanced by a strong emphasis on counterpoint and the austere restraint with which Beethoven achieves his effects. An outstanding evening, every second of it.