Few people are bold enough to programme anything alongside Mahler's Second Symphony - it is most often viewed as an epic standalone. Sakari Oramo, however, preceded it with Thea Musgrave's Concerto for Orchestra, commissioned and premiered by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra 28 years ago. Mahler the conductor would surely have approved of the defiant gesture, even if Musgrave's terse style made Mahler seem occasionally prolix.

Musgrave's concerto is an exercise in instrumental democracy. When she was writing a chamber concerto, preoccupations with the conflicting claims of solo and ensemble pursued her into sleep, and it was from a dream of a clarinet standing up, inciting his fellow musicians to revolt, that Musgrave fashioned the climactic sequence of this larger score. Its dramatic impact is all the greater for emerging from a reasoned dialogue, articulated most clearly by the wind instruments, mainly expressive but also bursting into paroxysms of fast notes that contribute to the mounting tension. The degree to which players take power into their own hands and to which the conductor's influence prevails is carefully notated by Musgrave but, even though there is final accord, it felt uneasy.

The effect on the symphony was to heighten awareness of Mahler's expressive means. The exceptional refinement of the CBSO's string and horn playing stood out, Oramo lovingly underlining a serenity and tenderness rather than extremes of mood. The entry first of the solo voices - Jane Irwin and Anu Komsi - and then of the immaculate CBS chorus had a beatific radiance that now seemed to have been implicit in everything that had gone before. It brought a fundamental integrity to the massive structure and its reverberant affirmation of hope.