The South Bank’s Metal Wood Skin festival showcases the formidable talents of charismatic percussionist Colin Currie. He was joined for the second concert by the Amsterdam-based ensemble Asko|Schönberg and conductor Clark Rundell for the UK premiere of Louis Andriessen’s Tapdance and the world premiere of Anna Clyne’s Secret Garden. Though poles apart, both works are in some respects about solitude.

Tapdance is a percussion concerto with a melancholy edge. The orchestral sound is poised somewhere between classical and big band, and the work is dominated by a sad, three-part blues, during which Currie plays “this lonely part for a percussionist”, as Andriessen calls it, tapping wood blocks to imitate the sound of a dancer’s feet, negotiating a big, nostalgic marimba solo, and finally beating out muffled tympani strokes as the work throbs to its close. Stressing the lyrical side of Currie’s musicianship, sometimes at the expense of his more familiar athleticism, it’s a beautiful score, at once graceful and deeply touching.

Secret Garden, in contrast, is a drum kit solo for a star. Clyne’s starting point was the fact that Currie was named Colin after a character in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, and his virtuoso and devil-may-care solo accompanies and at times threatens to obliterate a tape of himself reading passages from the book. The pounding opening section is fractionally too long, though halfway through the work turns into a creepily effective exercise in musical gothic with the on-tape addition of harp and organ to the texture.

Superb accompanists in Tapdance, meanwhile, Asko|Schönberg prove tremendous on their own, powering their way through Tansy Davies’s urban, scary Neon, and playing Andriessen’s seminal, electrifying Hoketus with almost unnerving precision: real edge-of-your-seat stuff, outstandingly done.

• Metal Wood Skin runs until December. Box office: 0844 875 0073. Venue: Southbank Centre, London.