These two performances marked the start of the festival's Beethoven and Bruckner cycles - and of the unusually programmed series of hour-long concerts that present either a major work in isolation, or a number of shorter pieces by a single composer. The two cycles don't, however, quite mirror each other. The Beethoven symphonies are all conducted by Charles Mackerras, while each of Bruckner's is allotted a different interpreter. There's also no attempt to pair each Beethoven symphony with its Brucknerian opposite number. At the opening concerts we found Sakari Oramo and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra performing Bruckner's First, while Mackerras and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra tackled Beethoven's Third, the Eroica.

In starting with the latter, Mackerras was, perhaps appropriately, stressing the work's centrality both in Beethoven's output and in cultural history. A truly great performance of the work should, above all, convey the sense of a composer breaking new ground and rewriting the musical rule book from scratch. Mackerras's blistering, fiery account did precisely that, with every harmonic and structural invention sounding completely and startlingly new, and every emotional swerve keeping the packed house on the edge of their seats.

Later in the evening, Oramo offered us equally important revelations of a very different order. Even though Bruckner's First is hardly a young man's work - he was 40 when he wrote it - it is hampered by a reputation for stylistic anonymity. "It could be by anyone," is a frequent critical comment. Oramo's performance - magisterially played and earning an ovation that seemed to go on forever - proved that it could, in fact, be by no one but Bruckner, and that it contains, albeit in embryonic form, the germinating ideas that eventually came to fruition in his later works. Phenomenal stuff, every glorious second of it.

· Both symphony cycles continue until September 1. Box office: 0131-473 2000.