To call the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra a chameleon bunch is intended as a compliment. Their ability to adapt to different performance practices is remarkable and, under the baton of period specialist Marc Minkowski, they sounded like another ensemble. Beethoven was never like this in the CBSO's days at the old town hall.

With numbers scaled down and strings using only the merest suspicion of vibrato, the character Minkowski brought to the opening of the Leonore Overture, No 2, was arresting: colours transparent so as to allow the restlessly changing harmonies to convey foreboding and the uncertainty of Florestan, the political prisoner. Perhaps it takes a Frenchman like Minkowski with liberty and equality engraved on his soul to convey Beethoven's drama so convincingly; the trumpet calls from deep inside the chambers of Symphony Hall were boldly stirring. It may have failed as an opera overture - the trumpet gives the game away by signalling the rescue - but Minkowski made a strong case for this as a programmatic symphony in encapsulated form and, thus, an excellent prelude to the Pastoral Symphony.

It wasn't just the clarity and spontaneity of this performance that was so refreshing, but a sense that Beethoven, disillusioned by what he saw as Napoleon's betrayal of revolutionary ideals, was reflecting the strength and solidarity of the people. For the spirit that imbues the Pastoral is not only that of nature and bird calls - the latter beautifully articulated - but of country people, peasants and shepherds, whose lives are dictated as much by natural forces as feudal ones. Minkowski invested every phrase with real vibrancy.

Christian Tetzlaff was the soloist in Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, mercurial but, in failing to embrace the work's intrinsic serenity, not entirely persuasive. Here again, it was Minkowski's alternation of incisiveness and masterly restraint that proved compelling.

· Repeated on Saturday. Box office: 0121-780 3333.