Not often does a counter-tenor get to sing with a symphony orchestra. But when that happens in future, Jonathan Dove’s Hojoki (An Account of My Hut) should be high on the list of repertoire choices. Evocative and poignant, this 25-minute piece is like one of those 18th-century cantatas designed to show off the expressive potential of a solo voice in many different moods.

The moods are supplied by the text: Donald Keene’s English translation of a chronicle written by Kamo no Chomei, a medieval Japanese poet and monk. It vividly describes how 13th-century Kyoto was ravaged by fire, whirlwind, famine and earthquake. Then the poet discusses his own renunciation of earthly concerns in preparation for a holy death. It’s a man coming to terms with his own, and mankind’s, fragility.

Dove sets this prose extract imaginatively and expertly, not least in ensuring that the counter-tenor is never swamped by the pictorial effects — terrifying, sombre, thrilling, ethereal — in the orchestra. The language is accessible: shades of Stravinsky, Debussy, Britten and Tippett, mingled with minimalist techniques. Yet the expressiveness feels new-minted, right to the final pages, where Dove whittles down the orchestra to wispy flute and harp phrases in an otherworldly oriental mode.

David Daniels, for whom the piece was conceived, fell ill four days before the premiere. The American-

born counter-tenor Lawrence Zazzo deserves the highest praise for giving so accomplished a performance after so little preparation time.

That redeemed an otherwise mediocre concert. There were three reasons why it should have been so much better. It marked the 60th anniversary of the BBC Third Programme, forerunner to Radio 3. It was dedicated to the memory of Sir John Drummond, whose fierce defence of highbrow standards at the BBC and elsewhere is much missed, even by those of us who felt the full froth of his indignation. And it

launched the month-long Listen Up! festival of British orchestras, marked by a new Copland-like brass fanfare by Gareth Wood.

All to no avail. In the hands of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Jirí Belohlávek, Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony was bland, boring and not very well kept together. They need to raise their game.