Charles Wuorinen is one of the most respected, prolific composers working today, but much better known in his native America than Europe. It is ironic because his music is far more directly related to European modernism than American experimentalism. Yet Wuorinen has not been widely adopted by the great European orchestras.

Oliver Knussen's concert sought to redress the balance with the world premiere of Cyclops, a single-movement, 25-minute structure scored for 21-piece ensemble. Its title derives from the music's tendency, as Wuorinen puts it, to "always point upward", but its real fascination is the way this is undermined by volatile changes of tempo and mood. Knussen depicted its kaleidoscopic vision with brilliant assurance.

However, there was dramatic immediacy as well as abstract structure: fanfares for brass alternated with violent woodwind squalls, before effusive solos for piano and languid cor anglais melodies grew out of the texture. There was genuine musical purpose behind this febrile exterior. Nowhere was this clearer than at the conclusion, with the players finding common purpose in a noisily repeated chord. But this was no comfortable resolution: there emerged in the aftermath a subversively quiet chord played by woodwind choir. Like the whole piece, the end was vividly poised between stability and instability.

The UK premiere of Esa-Pekka Salonen's Mania for solo cello and ensemble was a glittering movement that veered from the depths of trombone and double-bass sonority to the heights of piccolo and glockenspiel brilliance. But for all its speed and fluidity, it was more decorous than disturbing.

Completing the programme was the UK premiere of Dutch composer Richard Rijnvos's Block Beuys: Raum 2. The second piece of a projected series based on a Joseph Beuys exhibition at the Hessisches Landesmuseum, it seemed to turn sounds into objects. Weird fragments of melody were juxtaposed with unpredictable outbursts, all projected over the eerie backdrop of a continuous organ line.