Not for nothing was Nicola Benedetti proclaimed “the country’s favourite violinist” in the publicity for this concert. Six weeks in to her first major concert tour in a decade, she arrived at the Royal Albert Hall to lead what in some ways felt like a celebration – a sort of super-polished jam session, punctuated by friendly, unpolished chat from the stage. Musically, though, if this were a party she was serving canapes – lots of small, delicious things, but not quite a proper meal.

And yet those bite-size pieces offered a lot of enjoy. Benedetti’s supporting ensemble is an unconventional but inspired combo of cello, guitar and accordion: Maxim Calver, Plínio Fernandes and Samuele Telari were tight, flexible and responsive partners, and together the quartet created some intriguing sonorities, which came across in this hall better than some of the finer details.

The music fell loosely into three categories. There were the romantic salon pieces, including beautifully done arrangements of the Sicilienne attributed to Maria Theresia von Paradis but written by Samuel Dushkin, and Debussy’s Beau Soir. Benedetti’s generous tone and velvety phrasing could have been made for these; the supporting trio, sounding beautifully relaxed, conjured an ambience that explained the title of Violin Café, the recording released to accompany the tour.

Then there were Scottish folk tunes, for which the players were joined by Fin Moore on the smallpipes, first providing just the drone background, then taking up the melody as Benedetti extemporised above. The encore, Peter Maxwell Davies’s Farewell to Stromness, harked back to these.

And – in case anyone might have thought that the job of running the Edinburgh international festival would have dented Benedetti’s rock-solid technique – there were the show-off numbers: a Wieniawski polonaise and Paganini caprices, with No. 1 performed solo, as written, and No 24 given in a sparky arrangement that arguably lost some of the wow factor given that all those notes weren’t coming from just one violin. For Sarasate’s Navarra, a virtuoso but formulaic violin duet, Benedetti brought on Emma Baird as her partner. The same composer’s Carmen Fantasy was the final showstopper from a violinist still at the top of her game.

• At the Lighthouse, Poole, on Saturday, then touring in the UK until 4 December.