The year 2007: HP sauce ceased production in Birmingham, and Saed Haddad composed his Alternative World-versions for piano and orchestra. Amazing what you can learn from a concert programme. And a year on, that work received its UK premiere from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

With the Israeli Ilan Volkov conducting, and a Jordanian premiere performed by the Palestinian pianist Saleem Abboud Ashkar, you could have been forgiven for thinking this was one of those reconciliation-through-music concerts. But this aspect was played down or, rather, took its natural place. The focus was entirely and compellingly musical.

Haddad is something of a philosopher: he trained as a Roman Catholic priest, and his little 11-minute piano concerto takes it name from a phrase used by the American philosopher Nelson Goodman. His notion of “irrealism” inspired Haddad to distil into five tiny movements five notions of estrangement: from life, in Tombeau; from multiplicity, in Idée fixe; from fullness, in sur le néant; from reality in Ombres; and from society in Soliloque.

Far from being stifled by idea, these were pungent crystals of sound and image, beautifully crafted, and thought-provoking through the senses. The piano plays almost continuously, providing the harmonic core of the work. In Ombres it is particularly beguiling, as high harmonics resonating from the back of the orchestra pick up the piano’s notes.

Ashkar had to be given a little more to do, so Volkov persuaded him to play Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the left hand, which he did with robust physical confidence and mercurial imagination. Paul Dukas’s fairytale poème dansé, conjuring the exotic Persian legend of La Péri, had been a sensitively chosen and played curtain-raiser. And the CBSO ended with a superb performance of Debussy’s La Mer. Thanks to the ear and mind of Volkov, this was no mere pictorial seascape but a challenging canvas of abstract modernism.

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