Those familiar with Steve Martland's music and what it does best - the driving energy and excitement it engenders - might have been surprised by the side of the composer presented by the BBCSSO and Jurjen Hempel. There was precious little joy in this Martland portrait concert staged as part of the BBC's Listen Up! celebration of live music.

Babi Yar, receiving its Scottish premiere more than 20 years after it was written, is a brutal piece of contemporary music. Based, like Shostakovich's symphony, on the Soviet massacre of Jews and others considered "undesirable" during the second world war, it is Martland's earliest large-scale work and still one of his biggest, scored for 92 players including synthesiser and a vast battery of percussion.

Martland gives his subject matter suitably harrowing treatment, building from suspended chords and explosive percussion salvos into music of driving momentum and pounding rhythms. It makes for uncomfortable listening (even without the aggressively loud amplification). Remarkable, though, is the way in which Martland sustains its intensity over the half-hour span by adding layers of complexity and never allowing the energy to falter.

Further removed still from Martland's usual exuberance was Plaint, a new arrangement for string orchestra of the third movement of his string quartet Patrol. More Arvo Part than typical Martland, this is a work of harmonic stillness and long, suspended lines, the stratospheric nature of which at times left the BBCSSO first violins sounding perilously exposed.

Balance was restored by a second-half set from the Steve Martland Band in the more ambient surroundings of the Old Fruitmarket next door. Here, in works such as Kick and Beat the Retreat, was energy and exuberance in abundance.