Ryan Wigglesworth is currently composer-in-residence at English National Opera – his first stage work is due there in a few seasons' time – and someone at Aldeburgh too thinks he is a talent well worth nurturing. Wigglesworth composed the new work in the concert in Snape Maltings on the exact centenary of Britten's birth last November, and the premiere of his "dramatic cantata" Echo and Narcissus was featured during this year's opening festival weekend. Sandwiched between Schumann's Eichendorff Liederkreis Op 39 and Janacek The Diary of One Who Disappeared, it was the centrepiece of a recital given by tenor Mark Padmore and mezzo Pamela Helen Stephen, with the composer himself at the piano.

Wigglesworth says he had wanted to set the Narcissus poem from Ted Hughes' Tales from Ovid almost since the collection appeared in 1997, but only settled on a form for it after performing Janacek Diary with Padmore and Stephen last year. That gave him with the idea of three protagonists – a mezzo Chorus, who narrates the story, a tenor Narcissus and three other female voices singing together as Echo. As in Janacek cycle, the text switches between narrative, dialogue and reflection, with the piano providing a further layer of commentary, but there are other models, too - Britten's multi-voice canticles, perhaps, while the way in which the Chorus gradually abandons her neutrality and becomes involved in the fate of the two protagonists recalls The Rape of Lucretia.

The music, though, is very much Wigglesworth's own. What begins abrasively and urgently in the Chorus's narration becomes more direct and lyrical as the work goes on, with the ever more self-obsessed Narcissus allowed his moments of self-pity. Stephen led the way in this highly effective, tightly packed scena, with Padmore making the most of his moments of reflection; and Abigail Broughton, Verity Wingate and Olivia Warburton combined perfectly as the forlorn Echo.

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