In the concert hall and on disc Edward Gardner has been working his way through Janáček’s orchestral works, and his latest concert with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, which focused on music from central Europe, was framed by two of them. The miniature tone poem Jealousy was originally intended as the overture to the opera Jenůfa, but works well as a fierce concert opener; meanwhile, the rhapsody Taras Bulba may not have very explicit programmatic connections with the Gogol short story that inspired it, but it’s unmistakably mature Janáček, terse and economical, with not a note wasted.

The thrilling feistiness that Gardner and the BBCSO brought to both pieces seemed to carry over into the pair of tone poems from Smetana’s cycle Ma Vlast, too – Vltava was a distinctly turbulent river portrait, while Šárka never relaxed its dramatic grip. Szymanowski’s Second Violin Concerto was more relaxed, with generous orchestral cushions for Tasmin Little’s solo playing, which made as much of the languid low-register lyricism as it did of the forays into the highest reaches of the violin’s range.

There was a brief novelty, too – the UK premiere of Peter Eötvös’s The Gliding of the Eagle in the Skies, which he composed for the Basque National Orchestra five years ago. Basque folk music tinges its sound world – there are virtually concertante roles for a pair of cajöns, box-like percussion instruments played with the hands – while the wide spaced textures, piccolos over growling trombones, seem to evoke the idea of eagles soaring on mountain thermals. It’s by no means a major work and a few passages hang fire just a bit too long, but it’s colourful and effective.

• On Radio 3 on 9 January.