Kirill Karabits and his Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra go from strength to strength. Karabits' programming consistently proves his fine musicianship but also his shrewd, scholarly, instinct for bringing less familiar repertoire to the platform.

This Colston Hall concert opened with Shostakovich's suite The Gadfly, film music for Aleksander Feinzimmer's 1955 film. The five-movement sequence is a curious stylistic mix, but was an interesting reminder that the student Shostakovich had played for silent films and his fondness for the medium would see him write more than 30 soundtracks. Karabits homed in on the vivid character of each movement without allowing any cloying sentiment.

He adopted a similar approach to Prokofiev's last symphony, No 7 in C sharp minor, Op 131, a work often dismissed for its relative simplicity and lyricism. With the focus on a direct, unsentimental performance, eliciting beautiful string-playing from the BSO and the brittle aura of the tuned percussion writing, Karabits actually succeeded in revealing some of Prokofiev's painful unease at the very end of his life. It made for disquieting listening. This was subtly underlined when, as though offering the briefest of encores in response to the applause, Karabits added the jolly ending Prokofiev had been persuaded to write to please the Soviet authorities. By comparison with the original, such brightness sounded hollow.

Between these two works, the Canadian James Ehnes was the soloist in Britten's Violin Concerto, written just before the second world war. The collaboration between Ehnes and Karabits brought out the underlying psychological unease of Britten the pacifist, contemplating his recent exile from Britain and, significantly, affording moments of anguish that point directly to Peter Grimes. Few interpretations in the coming centenary celebrations will be as eloquent.

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