Ever since Charles Mackerras was handed the first Queen's Medal for Music in 2005, the award has gone only to individuals. Was it partly in protest at looming cuts in our already meagre music education system that this year the medal was given to our National Youth Orchestra – all of it?

Bizarrely, it was presented not at an NYO concert but at a London Symphony Orchestra one. At least there were five NYO string players on hand to collect the medal; and in the second half they joined in a solid, broad account of Elgar's Enigma Variations alongside their LSO counterparts. And the main conductor – Robin Ticciati, standing in for the indisposed Colin Davis – was himself a former NYO percussionist.

If highlighting education was the point, it was reinforced by Peter Maxwell Davies's new opening fanfare, conducted by Timothy Redmond, which involved dozens of young wind and brass players from LSO on Track. It was entitled Her Majesty's Welcome, but there were moments when it sounded anything but welcoming. While some of the melodies carried a nostalgic whiff of English late-romanticism, the relentless rhythmical figures and the loud side drum at times verged on the aggressive: Holst's Mars dressed up as Jupiter, perhaps.

Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto marked another step in the comeback Maxim Vengerov has been making this year. It is good to have him back. Immediately, that velvety, generous, big-hearted tone reminded us of what we have been missing. Yet some of the knotty violin histrionics in the first movement left Vengerov seeming stretched. Sometimes the orchestra even stole the limelight; with the old Vengerov on top form, you would barely have noticed there was an orchestra in the hall. Everyone wants to see and hear Vengerov back at the top of his game, but even his smooth, rhapsodic yet controlled Bach encore could not dispel the suspicion that he is not quite there yet.

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