Vic Hoyland's new orchestral piece, Qibti, is music at once ancient and modern. With its clusters of dense chords and sensuous orchestration, the 25-minute work is a close musical relation of orchestral pieces by Berio and Donatoni. However, its elemental grandeur and implacable rhythmic pulse give the piece an atmosphere of arcane ritual. Andrew Davis's performance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra unveiled a work of real structural power.

Inspired by Coptic textiles and Egyptian theology, Qibti creates a vivid play between surface detail and slower, architectonic lines. Individual pitches pass from one section of the orchestra to another, creating shimmering patterns, like a kaleidoscopic view of single musical objects.

Davis's interpretation built towards a climax of ecstatic intensity. Out of this imposing sonic edifice, fragments of melody emerged: a lamenting cor anglais line and an ornate clarinet tune. It was as if the music had shifted focus from the elemental to the human, and these melodies sounded like Hoyland's homage to the people of these ancient civilisations, ghosts stalking a depopulated musical landscape. The end of the piece returned to a stark emotional world, with tenebrous music for the lowest reaches of the orchestra.

The BBCSO were on convincing form for Hoyland's piece than in their lacklustre accompaniment for Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, but the solo part was played with mesmerising concentration by Simon Trpceski. Davis led the orchestra in his own selection of numbers from Prokofiev's ballet Cinderella in the second half. This potentially effective suite was ruined by Andrew Morton's specially written narration, read by Deborah Bull, which plumbed McGonagallian depths of inanity, and was epitomised by such pearls of imagination as rhyming "offered" with "proffered". It might have been a sop to the panto season, but the result was a dismal, damp squib.