Proms at…Cadogan Hall 6/Prom 51, Royal Albert Hall, London, review: Laura Mvula creates entirely distinct soundworlds

Two Proms, two very different premieres - Laura Mvula performs her new choral work, while the BBC Singers, Sakari Oramo, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Thomas Dausgaard perform Prom 51

Laura Mvula's composition premiered at the Proms fused the rhythmic exchanges of gospel and spirituals with the bittersweet clarity of Anglican choral music (Josh Shinner)

One day, two Proms, two very different premieres. The first was hot off the press: a brand new choral work by singer-songwriter Laura Mvula. Composed for the BBC’s in-house chamber choir the BBC Singers, "Love Like a Lion" sets verses by Ben Okri. In three short movements it charts the course of a relationship from urgent beginnings, through the rage of betrayal and parting, to arrive at new freedom and joy.

Deploying her choral forces with care, Mvula creates three entirely distinct soundworlds that fuse the declamatory, rhythmic exchanges of gospel and spirituals with the bittersweet clarity of Anglican choral music. We open with the latter – cool, watercolour clarity (efficiently captured by the choir under Sakari Oramo), shades of Finzi or Holst – but end emphatically with the former in light-footed, syncopated brilliance, a dance across continents and centuries. It’s neatly – and concisely – done, a welcome contrast to some of the season’s more prolix new offerings.

There’s nothing either neat or concise about Danish composer Per Norgard’s Third Symphony. Composed in 1975, this giant of a work (vast as much in conceptual scope as sheer physical size), the work has taken until now to make its way to the UK - a baffling, unforgiveable delay, belatedly remedied here by Thomas Dausgaard and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

There are no obvious footholds or ridges to grip onto in a world that unfolds in a single, ever-evolving musical gesture, and any listening experience is as much about surrender as active path-finding, losing yourself in texture, sensation. Dausgaard gave us a strong sense of pulse, animating Norgard’s shimmering, microtonal canvass, generating a sense of direction and rippling impulsion.

The BBC SSO gamely shape-shifted from oaken solidity (anchored in cellos and low brass) to liquid mercury in woodwind and tuned percussion, with the combined London Voice and National Youth Chamber Choir glinting through the texture with exquisite subtlety. It may not always be clear what’s going on in Norgard’s musical world, but it’s definitely somewhere you want to be.