People threw punches at the premiere of the Rite of Spring, and a good performance of Stravinsky's 1913 masterpiece should still hit you just above the gut. Vasily Petrenko's performance with the National Youth Orchestra is an experience to be felt as much as heard: few professional bands can match the NYO for sheer force of numbers, and the sound it produces is an almost seismic event.

Petrenko - who barely seems older than the teenage musicians in his charge - has achieved wonders transforming the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and here delivers a clarity of expression that sounds as if he has been at the helm of the NYO for years, rather than a five-day workshop. Nor is he afraid to challenge the orchestra's emotional range. Mature masterpieces do not get much more mature than Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs, yet the ensemble provides limpid, concentrated support for the Austrian soprano Gabriele Fontana and proves equally adept at capturing the languid sensuality of Ravel's Valses Nobles et Sentimentales - it is incredible how performers this young can sound quite so decadent.

Clarinettist, composer and NYO alumnus Mark Simpson is the only person to have become BBC Young Musician of the Year (in 2006) and win the Guardian/BBC Proms Young Composers competition. His newly commissioned piece, Threads, is an exultant overture that barely contains its excitement. The NYO celebrates its 60th anniversary this year, but of all its discoveries, Simpson may prove to be the most significant yet.

· At Symphony Hall, Birmingham, tonight. Box office: 0121-780 3333. Then touring.