Who would be a horn-player? Hardly anyone writes decent music for it, and blowing down 12ft of coiled tubing is a risky means of sound production. And you have to keep emptying it of spit.

Nebojsa Jovan Zivkovic is not the most obvious choice to add to the modern repertoire for this difficult instrument. The young composer, based in Germany, is principally known as a percussion firebrand who writes blistering marimba workouts for himself to perform.

He does occasionally write for other instruments, such as the cello, but it was his high-octane commission for Evelyn Glennie, the Concerto of the Mad Queen, which brought him to the attention of the Northern Sinfonia. The orchestra's principle horn, Peter Francomb, was so overwhelmed that he requested a new concerto on the spot.

Well, he asked for it - Zivkovic's concerto is a fiendish technical challenge from its opening bars. Whereas standard concerto form lets the soloist warm up before launching into a fiery cadenza, Zivkovic's piece is back-to-front, with rapid-fire passages of scales and flourishes by way of introduction. When the orchestra crashes in with the accompaniment, it crashes in hard.

Zivkovic's concerto is really a percussion piece with horn obbligato. The strings are required to snap and thwack their instruments, whilst the composer himself is visible as a blur behind his rack of tuned percussion.

This is not to detract from Francomb's considerable achievement. He is note perfect throughout, and never less than a focus for the headlong drama. There's a Shostakovich-like grandeur clattering through the work, which resolves rather beautifully when a second horn chimes in with an ethereal echo.

The Northern Sinfonia concluded, under the vivacious direction of Thierry Fischer, with Schubert's Great C Major Symphony, a work that opens with another of those defining moments for the horn: a unaccompanied pianissimo at an uncomfortable pitch. With the section leader back in the dressing room, it was left to his unfortunate deputy to blow it.