This billing should really have been enough to draw a bigger audience for Wednesday's early-evening concert. And the fact that world-renowned violinist Midori performed such an intriguing programme quite so brilliantly made it even more disappointing that there were not more members of the general public there to witness the full demonstration of her technical and musical prowess.

Her programme brought together a cleverly varied assortment of modern music, which, though all, chronologically-speaking, were products of the twentieth century, evidenced a wide-ranging collection of styles and idioms. Penderecki's Sonata No 2 for violin and piano was a brutal introduction to Midori's almost frighteningly superior technique, and she captured perfectly the stark, angular quality of the music.

The Sonata mixes serial techniques with neo-classicist melodic flourishes and is almost sociopathic in its emotional containment. It has formal sophistication and expressivity, tenderness and frailty, but all of these elements are spoken by a ruthless and somewhat disengaged voice.

The music of Magnus Lindberg, James MacMillan and John Adams appeared in the second half, and, if one were to make any criticism of Midori's performance, it might be that, for some reason or other, MacMillan's After the Tryst seemed to sound a little harsh given the simple sentimentality of the old Scots love poem upon which the music is based.

The short work, in fact, served to highlight the exquisite playing of Midori's accompanist, Charles Abramovic, who was able to inject the performance with some much-needed vulnerability.

A rousing, rhythmic interpretation of John Adams's Road Movies, however, proved that Midori's sense of the American musical vernacular is beyond doubt.