He sees himself, he falls in love, he dies. And then, Ovid tells us, he spends his afterlife condemned to repeat the experience over and over again. Nothing in the myth of Narcissus tells us that it would suit a composer like Matthias Pintscher, whose musical vocabulary, he says, is defined by its “theatricality”.

And yet Reflections on Narcissus, which received its UK premiere with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the baton of its composer, is about the most dramatic retelling of this episode that you could possibly imagine.

Nothing is explicit — that is, nothing except the cellist Truls Mørk’s depth of expression. In five fluid movements, Mørk combined the precision that Pintscher’s vast canvas required with the poetry needed to give it some soul.

Is the cello Narcissus himself? It’s not clear, but Mørk certainly evoked intoxicating self-absorption. His cello stuttered, quivered, muttered, driving itself into furious chromatic cul de sacs just as often as he thinned down to one fragile thread of sound.

I’m not sure anyone else but Mørk could have combined the level of precision that Pintscher’s intricate score required with the sheer musicality that lifted this quasi-concerto’s meanderings and glacial intensity to a higher level. Around Mørk, the “reflections” shattered and reformed: short bursts from muted trumpets, dark chords from piano and celesta, and most of all an arsenal of percussion that croaked, dribbled, shimmered and glistened throughout. Exotic but slippery foundations: Mørk notwithstanding, after 40 minutes of falling through Narcissus’s pool I wanted out from the splintered patterns and hectic gurgles.

Not that there was much meat on the rest of the menu. The curtain-raiser was Messiaen’s late bonbon, Un sourire, delivered with curiously unsmiling accuracy by the BBC players. Pintscher followed his own work by attempting to turn Ravel’s Shéhérazade overture into a kindred spirit, deadening its strong flavours and entrancing colours.

But conductor and orchestra did seem to find a good fit in the final offering, Stravinsky’s 1945 Firebird Suite, whose cleaner, fiercer textures were deftly and confidently shaped by Pintscher around some wonderfully rapt solo work.