Van der Aa acolytes may be surprised at the lack of a visual element in his new Violin Concerto (2014), especially after the ‘engrossing and unsettling’ (Richard Whitehouse, 4/12) experience that was his film-cum-cello concerto Up Close. In a sense, though, there is a visual element here, and it’s the dedicatee Janine Jansen: the way she holds herself in performance, the ‘theatrical’ nature of her delivery and the energy she transmits to musical collaborators, all of which, according to the composer, shaped the score.

The concerto is unashamedly a showpiece: an often confrontational, sometimes compliant but always imposing discourse between soloist and orchestra. The work’s disquieting energy may be characteristic of the composer but there are only passing references to his proven ability to find the physical qualities in a phrase or gesture and examine them as if from every angle. In that sense, half of me thinks the concerto less distinctive than almost any other work I’ve heard by him; the other half is sucked in by the thrill of the ride.

For that thank Jansen and Jurowski, who deliver a performance of immense presence, conviction and tonal lustre. Van der Aa has captured the violinist’s musical persona to the point where it can sound as if she’s improvising and the RCO relish his fascinating orchestrations. Like, for example, the sound of sand being brushed on a drumhead, which seems to open Hysteresis (2013) as well as the concerto.

That sound has an electronic, static quality but only in Hysteresis do we hear actual electronics, specifically as sampled bits of soloist Kari Kriikku’s playing come back to troll him as his identity crises deepens. Kriikku plays wonderfully and finds all the theatre in that situation and others, the Amsterdam Sinfonietta with him all the way. First-class presentation as always from Van der Aa’s own label, except the booklet-note – if it’s intended as a parody of sycophantic, new-music mumbo-jumbo then it’s very amusingly done.