Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Mackerras, Usher Hall, Edinburgh

We in Britain were introduced to the music of Janacek by a series of opera productions at Sadler's Wells in the early Sixties. It was a revelation. Here was a composer who was deeply humane, earnest, fresh-spirited, totally original. We rushed out to hear the orchestral works, the string quartets, the piano and chamber music, but nothing surpassed that initial thrill, which had been conjured up by a young Australian conductor called Charles Mackerras.

Sir Charles, thank goodness, is still conducting Janacek. The Glagolitic Mass, which opened this year's Edinburgh International Festival, is not much like the operas, it's true. In this piece we hear the rambunctious country boy rather than the grave and humble philosopher. Indeed, Mackerras brought it fiery and incandescent, straight out of the Moravian earth that Janacek revered; the rhythmic stammer of the Slavonic languages, the feral simplicity of folksong, the boisterous brassneck of the local lads, were swept up in the tattoos and fanfares of this astonishing score.

It was more astonishing than usual, in fact, for Paul Wingfield has recovered some of the original features, which were lost when the first performers found the piece too hard and had to have it slightly tamed. It now sounds madder, more ferocious than ever, and the extraordinary religious certainty is now quite overwhelming. This country boy believed confidently in God, even though Janacek, his creator, was an atheist.

As for the Edinburgh performers, they stayed the course pluckily, lifted high by the magnificent trumpets of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Christine Brewer was the right soprano soloist, vivid and exciting, and the tenor, Glenn Winslade, was as equal to his savage, stratospheric part as mortal man can be. Neil Davies (bass) and Jane Irwin (mezzo) were admirable in the smaller parts. In the famous organ solo, Thomas Trotter went nearly off his head, the newly-restored Usher Hall organ apparently driven by steam. The Edinburgh Festival Chorus sounded boisterous in some passages and a bit too refined in others. Yet somehow, all were galvanised by this truly great Janacek conductor.

Sir Charles chickened out of conducting the short preceding work, Kurtag's Stele, which was directed by Garry Walker. It's a dense, impressive piece for large orchestra, rather unlike the Kurtag we know; the title refers to a Greek funerary monument, and the piece is built of massive, still blocks of sonority.

But with all its subtle techniques of canon, canto fermo and rhythmic manipulation, it impresses most with its moans of lament and with the strange concluding harmonies, like the cries of a great bird. It gets inside you, and finally it moves the heart.