Kevin Puts’s music has an optimism and directness that, at least on its surface, harks back to mid-century American composers like Copland, Harris and Hanson. His Second Symphony (2002) begins in idyllic, glittering, diatonic purity, then unexpectedly shifts to a much darker mood – an illustration, the composer writes, of the ‘paradigmatic shift’ following 9/11. Yet it’s a surprisingly uneventful work given the tragic nature of its inspiration. Puts seems more concerned with establishing moods and mixing colours – which he does expertly, by the way – than with formulating a musical argument. It’s like a film score, in that sense. So, rather than feeling compelled to follow particular threads and patterns, one can simply allow the music to guide one’s wandering thoughts.

The brightly coloured Flute Concerto (2013) clearly comes from the same pen, though it is far more traditional in its musical rhetoric. Most of the first movement and much of the finale are developed from a sweet, folk-like snippet of a tune heard at the very beginning. It’s light, playful music without much emotional complication. The central slow movement is the concerto’s beating heart: a kaleidoscopic, free-form variation on the Andante from Mozart’s K467 Piano Concerto. Puts amplifies the pathos in Mozart’s well-known work while adding his own, peculiarly American commentary. LSO principal Adam Walker plays the solo part with exquisite grace and purity of tone, and Marin Alsop elicits an impressively polished performance from Peabody’s student orchestra, despite some occasional strain and thinness in the strings.

The programme also includes River’s Rush (2004), a slightly rambling cinematographic tone-poem that often sounds like Wagner channeled through Adams and John Williams. Indeed, some passages (at 8'04", for instance) could easily be edited seamlessly into a Star Wars soundtrack.