What a pity that those of my colleagues in the newspaper world who complain most noisily about orchestras “constantly churning out hackneyed repertoire” were notably absent from this event, which traced the history of Dutch orchestral music from the Baroque to ink-still-drying-on-the-page. Or are they so familiar with the works of Unico van Wassenaer, Robin de Raaff, Hendrik Andriessen, Henk Badings Theo Loevendie and Alphons Diepenbrock that they wrote the concert off as “more of the same old stuff”?

Whatever, they missed some interesting pieces. Presented by the Ross Pople’s London Festival Orchestra and backed (as you might expect) by the Dutch Embassy, the concert proved one thing at least: that Dutch music has got considerably livelier and more original as the centuries have progressed.

Wassenaer’s Concerto Armonico No 1 (which until recently was attributed to Pergolesi, since its aristocratic composer disdained to put his own name on his manuscript) may plod along like Vivaldi on a dull Tuesday; Andriessen’s sacred song-cycle Miroir de Peine (sung with just the right poised intensity by the promising Dutch soprano Hanneke de Wit) may sit rather obviously in the shadow of the French Impressionists; and Badings’s Largo en Allegro for strings may sound like a hundred other vaguely uneasy, strenuously polyphonic, neo-Classical pieces produced across Europe in the 1930s.

But the two contemporary pieces really tickled the ear. Loevendie, a veteran jazz saxophonist with an experimental streak, was his own soloist in The 5 Drives – an extended improvisation, sometimes amazingly dextrous, elsewhere wacky and guttural, over an eccentric orchestral backcloth. Raaff’s Piano Concerto turned out to be a well-crafted, busy interplay of equals between the pianist (the able Ralph van Raat) and a chamber ensemble. Gamelan-like jangles were mixed with explosive, recurring rhythmic riffs, introspection with firecracker cascades of figuration. Its overall shape eluded me; but its incidental felicities were engaging.

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