This was a concert rich in contrasts, from Sasha Scott’s eerie exploration of the borderland between sleep and waking to Pierre Boulez’s juxtaposition of directed music with freeform improvisation. It was LSO Futures at its best, with three world premieres – two of them commissioned by the far-sighted Helen Hamlyn Panufnik Composers’ Scheme, now in its 20th year – and featuring South Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho as part of his LSO Artist Portrait series.
Taking its name from the Hebrew for “carvings”, Omri Kochavi’s Gilufim is a likable work, its limber profile hewn from a denser original. Discordant orchestral slabs were whittled away by the insistent tap, tap, tap of an effervescent marimba. A nut shaker representing a crackling fire did the rest, the music emerging from the flames with a newfound harmonic solidity. Scott’s unsettling Sly featured woozy wodges of sound interrupted by sinister slitherings and a panicky orchestral nightmare before a vibraphone chimed in triggering an uneasy state of awareness. On the podium, Maxime Pascal was the most unflappable of guides.
