Best known for his work with ensembles (not least in Bang on a Can), Michael Gordon is no slouch when it comes to translating his high-octane idiom into the orchestral genre. Whether or not Dystopia was meant to be heard in the context of a film by Bill Morrison, its use of techniques from 15th-century hocketing to 1990s ‘drum and bass’ results in music which, if it does not quite sustain momentum across the half-hour duration, is still impressive for its rhythmic propulsion and an accruing of incident right through to those tumultuous final bars.

After which Rewriting Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony feels outwardly the more schematic in its evolution. In his brief though pertinent booklet-note, Gordon reflects on the decibel impact this work must have had on its early listeners; and while that could hardly be recaptured today, the American composer’s taking of just one ‘essential idea’ from each movement is a viable means of generating cumulative velocity across and between its four movements. Interesting, too, is the way that the borrowed element is increasingly absorbed into this music: whether or not Gordon truly ‘forgot about Beethoven’, the outcome is a distinctly personal perspective.

Such music demands no half measures in terms of execution, and the playing of both the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Bamberg Symphony meets the respective challenges with alacrity. Response to the latter work does sound audibly more equivocal, as if suggesting the Bamberg audience might have been nonplussed. Or maybe this was more a case of aural shell shock?