One thing guaranteed to enliven early January’s flat musical calendar is the National Youth Orchestra throwing itself at a masterpiece. Sibelius’s Symphony No 2 found Kirill Karabits pushing his 164 players as hard as any of his professional orchestras, drawing out string playing of depth and warmth and some beautiful woodwind work. The third movement, taken as fast as anyone ever plays it, hurtled into a finale whose closing moments positively glowed. This is, one could argue, the main purpose of the NYO: good old-fashioned training on works that will follow the musicians through their lives.

Another, especially given the NYO Inspire programme, is making orchestral playing look fun – presumably the thinking behind opening with Rick Dior’s Science Fiction, a frenetic, shallow mashup of Latin rhythms and B-movie clips. The dozen-strong percussion section was out front, backed by wind and brass, flanked by harps. Pay too much attention to the aliens getting zapped on the screen above and you would have missed the theremin player casting spells into thin air. Where were the string players? Out back, ready to process into the auditorium to provide rhythmic clapping and wordless singing towards the end.

Then, in a gesture that was semi-effective but that other orchestras could learn from, they returned, with violins, for some improv to cover the lengthy stage rearrangement for John Adams’s Doctor Atomic Symphony. Adams’s music, based on themes from his 2005 opera about the first atomic bomb test, weakens without its dramatic context, but his trademark gatherings of momentum were effective, the trumpet and trombone solos brilliant. It was persuasive work from a young orchestra who are engaging with 21st-century music and the big ideas that inspired it.

• At Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham, on 7 January. On BBC Radio 3 on 14 January..