Birmingham hosted the opening date on the Australian Chamber Orchestra's European tour, but there was nothing about the performances to suggest they had recently arrived from the other side of the world. In a long programme framed by Mozart symphonies – No 29 in A K201 and No 40 in G minor K550 – director Richard Tognetti and his group produced playing of fabulous alertness and tight ensemble; if there's a better chamber orchestra in the world today, I haven't heard it.

The ACO's instruments are modern, but there was enough in the two Mozart symphonies to show that some of the techniques of period performances had been taken on board – there was no spare flesh on the textures and vibrato was very strictly rationed. The sound was perfectly proportioned, too: with all the players (apart from the cellos obviously) standing up, it has a flexibility and buoyancy that seat-bound ensembles sometimes lack, and that seems to allows the balance to be perfectly natural.

Russian music separated the symphonies. Larger string groups might produce more sumptuous weight of tone in Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings, but not the finely painted inner detail the ACO managed, nor the exquisitely spun melodic thread through its slow movement, while in Shostakovich's Concerto for piano and trumpet, with Freddy Kempf and Tine Thing Helseth as the soloists, they responded with playing of whiplash precision. Though it's a concerto in which the trumpet is very much the junior partner, Helseth took every opportunity to show what a fine instrumentalist she is, even if there was something a bit bombastic about Kempf's contribution; this is, after all, a work in which a touch of sardonic brittleness is entirely appropriate.