As album titles go, ‘Music for a New Century’ offers a varied if somewhat uneven snapshot of new music composed and performed during the past decade. Philip Glass has produced some impressive concertos to date, such as his Double Concerto for violin and cello, but the three-movement Piano Concerto No 3 isn’t one of them. Other than an intensely dramatic moment around the first movement’s halfway point, this workmanlike concerto often lacks purpose and direction. Admittedly, there are some effective moments, such as the introspective piano cadenza at the end of the second movement, played with more poise and continuity by Alexey Botvinov by than Simone Dinnerstein with A Far Cry. Nevertheless, Glass’s concerto hardly slips out of first gear, and one is reminded too often that the composer is going through the motions. Its weaknesses are laid bare in the final movement (dedicated to Arvo Pärt), where 70 bars are made to stretch to over 16 minutes’ music via endless repetitions and interminable dal segno recapitulations. To be fair, Botvinov and the New Century Chamber Orchestra adhere closely to the indicated tempo mark of crotchet=80; if anything, they push it in places. However, clocking in at a much ‘brisker’ 14 minutes, Dinnerstein and A Far Cry ensure that the music is less likely to overstay its welcome.

More spark, sizzle and pop belong to the first minute of Tan Dun’s energetic Double Concerto for violin, piano and string orchestra with percussion than Glass’s entire concerto. Darting up and down the fingerboard, sometimes in frenzied freewheeling fashion, Hope’s violin is given a vigorous workout, aided by punchy, powerful support from Botvinov’s muscular piano-playing. Hope is equally adept at conveying the work’s plaintive songlike qualities, heard in the second half of the first movement, noticeably at the beginning of the second and throughout the third – where Tan Dun cleverly combines both visceral and lyrical elements. A strong sense of line and shape also marks Hope’s performance of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Lament for solo violin and string orchestra, its elegiac qualities offset by weightier chorale-like moments.

Rounding off the album, brevity is certainly the soul of wit in Jake Heggie’s sleek, neoclassical tongue-in-cheek Overture – its quirky postmodern, pastiche-like evocation of Stravinsky’s Pulcinella not so much a music for a new century but more a music of centuries gone by.