It's quite something to have members of the BBC Symphony Orchestra filing into the auditorium when they could be getting an early train home. The draw was the young German violinist Julia Fischer in the Beethoven Concerto and she brought to it a star quality the rest of the programme had conspicuously lacked.

Fischer has an imperious stage presence that translates into a reading of the Beethoven that is technically flawless, intermittently eloquent but ultimately lacking humanity. What this performance, aided by David Zinman's supportive conducting of the BBCSO, did offer was long, arching phrases: a seamless unfolding of lines - notably in the first-movement cadenza.

The Larghetto had an undeniable rapt quality that came closest to finding the human heartbeat. Yet the phrasing, for all its elegance, was never truly melting.

At last in the cadenza of the finale was a flash of temperament: the drama we had been waiting for. A little late, but evidence of a more complete artist still to be revealed.

The title of Alasdair Nicolson's The Broken Symphony (receiving its world premiere) alludes both to its two parts, one heard in each half of the concert, and its evocation of a "broken", conflictridden world. In the first part, Endless Laments, those tensions are depicted by nagging muted trumpet figures and percussive assaults on full orchestra, but building to a more sustained protest. Ghost Dances continues the elegiac mood before achieving closure in atmospheric quiescence.