Michael Daugherty's percussion concerto UFO, which was given its British premiere by Leonard Slatkin and the Philharmonia, was composed with Evelyn Glennie's extraordinary talents in mind. A vision of the American obsession with all things extraterrestrial, Glennie is cast as a silver-clad alien at the work's opening. Rigged up to some sophisticated live electronics, she processed through a darkened Royal Festival Hall, producing strange vocal utterances and weird, industrial scrapings. Four aliens-cum-percussionists appeared in the Festival Hall's boxes, and the scene was set for the visual and sonic spectacular of Daugherty's piece.
As a demonstration of the percussionist's range, UFO was brazenly successful. Crashing cymbals and cascades of drums were noisily impressive, while bowed vibraphones and tinkling bell-trees showed the softer side to Glennie's art. Daugherty's music is an amalgam of stock film-music stereotypes and 20th-century cliches. In classic B-movie style, clunky chromaticism and driving rhythms represent the threat of the little green men, while ethereal metallic crashes hint at their exotic allure. It all adds up to a virtuosically immediate use of orchestral resources.
But the knowingly wafer-thin substance of the music does have its drawbacks. In a toe-curling fourth section, Glennie improvised with metal bars and handfuls of squeaking rubber sausages. As music, this was lame; as theatre, it was redundant. Thankfully, the final movement at least concentrated on Glennie's musical gifts. But the maniacal repetition of a single rhythm made its point well before the end of the piece.
There was a far greater coup de thétre in Copland's Third Symphony. The whole symphony is a vision of post-war renewal and optimism, and the last movement is even based on Copland's definitively American Fanfare for the Common Man. But in the middle of a jaunty transformation of this famous tune, a powerful dissonance seemed to suggest the paranoia and insecurity - like the rise of the UFO craze - that were soon to engulf the US. Over the whole work, Slatkin and the Philharmonia achieved a winning balance between the structural strength of Copland's symphony and its obvious melodic appeal.
***** Unmissable **** Recommended *** Enjoyable ** Mediocre * Terrible
