Each of the two concerts in the BBC Symphony Orchestra's survey of Leonard Bernstein's symphonies was meant to include a new work by a British composer.

That plan foundered when Steve Martland failed to complete his Percussion Concerto in time for the first programme, but at least on Saturday Mark-Anthony Turnage's A Quick Blast did precede Bernstein's First and Third Symphonies, the Jeremiah and the Kaddish.

A Quick Blast isn't entirely new; it was first performed by the BBCSO and Leonard Slatkin at the Cheltenham Festival last July, and this was the London premiere. The 10-minute piece, scored for woodwind, brass and percussion only, is the first product of Turnage's relationship with the orchestra as its first associate composer, and is the opening movement of a triptych that he will compose during his tenure.

A Quick Blast certainly comes across as an exuberant upbeat to something more extended and weightier to come. It propels itself like a scherzo, full of sharp-witted, interlocking woodwind and more organic brass motifs. Long-limbed melodies unwind through the busy textures, and eventually take centre stage when the music pauses for a cool trio full of haunting solo lines.

It is typical Turnage, but its complex layering needs a conductor prepared to work on detail, which Slatkin isn't. There were several moments when the textures were far more congested than the score suggested they should be.

Slatkin seemed much more at home in the hand-me-down rhetoric of Bernstein, whose grandiloquence stems from Shostakovich, Mahler, Prokofiev and, in the least convincing passages, even from Korngold.

· This concert is broadcast on Radio 3 tomorrow.