The influences on conductor Kwamé Ryan are many and varied. He is Canadian-born and Caribbean-raised; he studied music at Cambridge and cites as mentor the Hungarian Peter Eötvös. Yet if there is a characteristic that emerges on the podium, it is his single-mindedness, a determination to reach the emotional heart of a work.

In his debut with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Ryan conducted a programme of Prokofiev and Shostakovich that constituted a halfway house between mainstream and the contemporary repertoire with which he is increasingly engaged. Prokofiev's early Autumnal Sketch betrayed all the aspirations and angst of a young man who knows that music will be a lifetime's compulsion. And here Ryan, too, revealed his own sensibilities. Conducting without a baton, he described the arcs of Prokofiev's phrasing with striking intensity. With its almost impressionistic colour and texture, it offered a different aural perspective on Prokofiev from the norm, in turn allowing the lyricism of his Third Piano Concerto to emerge as strongly as its rhythmic vitality. Soloist Peter Donohoe also underlined the constant tension between poetic feeling and mercurial technique, so that the force of the piano's engagement with the orchestra in the final allegro was the culmination of what had gone before.

Ryan's biggest test was in Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony. Again his sure sense of colour and strong linear definition made for an incisive interpretation, with the sense of resignation in the largo most affectingly realised by the CBSO. But even if something of the massive architectural structure was ultimately lacking, Ryan signalled that his is a talent that deserves to be seen over here more often.