★★★☆☆
Joy? We could do with more of it in our lives, though not much seeped out of the opening novelty in the season’s first Prom by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. To be fair, Helen Grime’s new piece, partly commissioned by the BBC, bore the name Meditations on Joy rather than “Joy” itself. Nonetheless striking, it was structured in the Scottish composer’s usual multilayered way, with strands often proceeding at different speeds, clear-cut instrumentation (she wasn’t mentored by Oliver Knussen for nothing) and thematic fragments chewed over in the obsessive manner of a goat digesting its dinner.
Joy of sorts arrived with clattering staccato outbursts for brass and percussion and swirling woodwinds, but the most lingering mood of this three-movement, 15-minute creation was contemplative
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