Jonathan Dove's new work takes on the daunting challenge of celebrating the ideas of scientist James Lovelock within a 20-minute orchestral piece. The three movements of Gaia Theory - marked "lively", "very spacious" and "dancing" – attempt to convey some of Lovelock's highly influential concepts in purely musical form. "Evolution," the scientist is quoted as saying in Dove's own programme note, "is a tightly coupled dance, with life and the material environment as partners. From the dance emerges the entity Gaia".
Appropriately, the resulting score possesses considerable ongoing rhythmic vitality as well as a good deal of harmonic and orchestral sophistication. A plentiful use of tuned percussion brings splashes of vital colour to music that has a consistently high energy level in the outer movements.
As so often in Dove's work, the music of John Adams is a clear influence, but if Dove has little that is distinctively his own to add to this inherited musical language, it is one he handles with appreciable accomplishment. The result, though, frequently seems to provide a sonic background to something that never quite materialises in front of it. One can easily imagine strong visual images and an Attenborough voiceover supplying the missing ingredients. Conductor Josep Pons and the BBC Symphony Orchestra were the piece's confident exponents.
In her Proms debut, the Argentinian pianist Ingrid Fliter played Mozart's Piano Concerto No 23 in A major, K488. Her playing was lucid in tone and dapper in execution; both she and the orchestra quickly recovered from a momentary blip in the slow movement.
The second half, Ravel's complete ballet score to Daphnis and Chloe, was superbly done, with the wonderful wordless singing of the BBC Symphony Chorus.
• Until 13 September. Box office: 0845 401 5040. Details: Proms 2014.
