“Homage to Yehudi Menuhin”, it was called, this strange patchwork of a concert, one moment a conventional BBC Symphony Orchestra evening, complete with new commission and broadcast, one moment a festive parade in search of a festival. The three stars can only be an average: each item here deserved its own star-rating, from the indisputable nul points of Gerald Barry’s abysmal new piece, to the five of Jennifer Pike’s Saint-Sä ens Introduction and Rondo capriccioso. Interesting that Pike was the only soloist not to have attended the Menuhin School.

So — in ascending order. The world premiere of Barry’s Day, 13 minutes of isolated pizzicato pluckings, occasionally forming a rhythmic pattern, and twice relieved by a brief bowed ditty, was an insult to the BBC who commissioned it, to the orchestral players, and to the audience who endured it. For all the talk in the programme note of landscape, listening, conversing, and 50 years of feeling, this was a work so lacking in substance or craft that it made minimalism seem grossly extravagant. The composer was not present.

And speaking of extravagance, this bizarre evening had begun with Stokowski’s celebration of as many violins as it’s possible to fit on stage, in his transcription of the Preludio from Bach’s Partita No 3 for solo violin. More Bach, and just about three stars, for two near-contemporaries at the Menuhin School, Nicola Benedetti and Alina Ibragimova, as they autopiloted their way through the Double Concerto.

Pike’s Saint-Säens at last revealed a truly engaging musicality, and a determination to make even a shamelessly virtuosic showpiece very much her own. Her playing had a nimble thoughtfulness about it, and a shy but assured sense of style.

Tasmin Little’s tried, trusted and four-star Elgar Violin Concerto was a fit consummation for the evening: admirable in its soul and its stamina, her playing also drew the very best from the orchestra, conducted gamely throughout by John Storgards.