In 1946, the BBC launched the Third Programme, the station that eventually morphed into Radio 3, aiming it at "the alert and receptive listener". While those fitting that description might not have found this 60th anniversary concert, given by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under new chief Jiri Belohlavek, much of a challenge to that receptiveness, it did at least have a substantial new work at its centre.

Hojoki (An Account of My Hut) is Jonathan Dove's new 30-minute setting of an essay written in Japan 800 years ago by Kamo no Chomei, who surveyed the world philosophically from a cocoon-like dwelling outside Kyoto, and whose prose calmly relates a catalogue of disasters, natural and man-made, that would leave the most dedicated doomsayer speechless.

With David Daniels having succumbed to flu, the premiere became an impressive showcase for the fast-rising countertenor Lawrence Zazzo, who had had just four days to learn a new piece lasting longer than the average operatic countertenor role, and whose clear, ringing tone did much to bring it to life.

Dove's talent has long been for painting vivid pictures with his music, and in Hojoki he excels himself. His choices of instruments are so appropriate as to sound almost obvious - tense, skipping trumpets for fire, languid contrabassoon for famine - yet he steers just clear of cliche, even when the Japanese-sounding flute and harp for Chomei's reflections on his frugal lifestyle push perilously close.

Otherwise, this was a solid programme and, after Gareth Wood's brief opening fanfare, not terribly celebratory. Hojoki excepted, nothing represented what the BBCSO does best. The new work was sandwiched by Dvorak's Suite in A, warmly played but comfortable rather than stirring, and a steady, slightly stodgy performance of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony. Even an alert listener not in the know might have wondered whether the Third Programme in fact evolved into Classic FM.