Oliver Knussen's concert with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra was a typical Knussen concoction - a pair of 20th-century classics framing a work of his own and the premiere of a piece by a composer from the younger generation, all delivered with the precise immediacy that characterises everything he conducts.

It was not unexpected to find Stravinsky's Scènes de Ballet in the programme - Knussen regularly champions unfashionable neoclassical pieces - but Respighi's Botticelli Triptych was a surprise. The sleekly muscular performance showed why the piece might appeal to Knussen and what he shares musically with the Italian composer, even though harmonically their worlds might seem light years apart.

Both are master orchestrators, with an ability to reimagine sonority and create textures that appear to glow from within; the connection is Rimsky-Korsakov, with whom Respighi studied and who was also part of the bundle of modernist precursors so important in the formation of Knussen's own musical language.

Those influences persist in his most recently completed orchestral work: the Violin Concerto that was composed for Pinchas Zukerman in 2000 and has since been taken up by an impressive roster of soloists. They include Leila Josefowicz, who played it with the SCO, catching just the right balance between edgy brilliance and tightly coiled lyricism.

Knussen's ability to make every note count is one Stuart MacRae could usefully cultivate. MacRae's Three Portraits was the premiere in the concert, and showed again what a huge talent he is, but how the proportions of his music can still sometimes go awry. The first two of these pieces, one all sombre, slow-moving lines punctuated by staccato chords, the second exploding the same gestures into a much more nervy and extrovert orchestral landscape, are thoroughly convincing in a Bergian sort of way. But the third, the only portrait based upon a programmatic idea, is much less successful - diffuse and overlong.