Danish composer Per Norgard celebrated his 70th birthday earlier this year, and the Proms marked the event with the British premiere of his Sixth Symphony. The work's subtitle, At the End of the Day, seems to hint at rose-tinted nostalgia. But nothing could have been further from the elemental soundworld unleashed by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Thomas Dausgaard.

Cast in three movements, the music explores the limits of orchestral sonority. The opening movement is played out as an impulsive drama between two extremes of register. It begins with high, glittering sounds for strings and piccolos, but soon lurches towards the depths of the orchestra, whose lowest reaches are amplified by the exotic rumbles of contrabass trombone and tuba.

Each movement is more unpredictable than the last. The second grows in speed and power, leading into the blistering energy of the final allegro energico, which also revisits the evanescent soundworld of the opening. It ends with a shimmering question mark, scored for strings and percussion.

The symphony is defined by the volatility of every musical moment. But it also convinces as a complete journey. Listening to it is like being carried along on a river of molten lava; it is as organic and overwhelming as an uncontrollable force of nature. Dausgaard and his Danish players produced a performance of magnificent physicality and conviction.

The DNSO's monumental programme continued with Carl Nielsen's Violin Concerto. The young Danish violinist Nikolaj Znaider was the brilliant soloist; his beguiling lyricism created a dazzling rapport with Dausgaard and the orchestra. But next to the intensity of the Norgard, Nielsen's genial concerto sounded merely quaint. The second half of the programme returned to epic symphonism with Brahms's First Symphony. Dausgaard produced a powerful but precarious interpretation, full of extreme changes of speed and dynamic, and the players responded with vivid and impassioned playing.