Austrian composer Thomas Larcher’s A Padmore Cycle was written, originally with piano accompaniment, for tenor Mark Padmore in 2011. It was orchestrated earlier this year: Larcher’s description of the process indicates he considered it a recomposition rather than an arrangement. The world premiere of the revised version was given by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Edward Gardner, in a programme that also contained music by Schubert, Henze and John Adams.

The cycle takes its cue from Padmore’s noted ability to portray anguish by the sparsest of means, though it also, in part, indulges in an extended dialogue with the Austro-German lieder tradition. Cryptic texts by Hans Aschenwald and Alois Hotschnig hint at the reflection of some unspecified psychic crisis in the seasonal patterns of nature: the inevitable comparisons with Schubert were intensified by its proximity to the latter’s Unfinished Symphony, and to Henze’s Erlkönig, itself a partial re-working of Schubert’s famous ballad. Larcher’s melodic lines, however, are more reminiscent of Schumann, while his orchestration, for massive forces sparingly used, owes much to Mahler. The vocal writing, with its high pianissimos, expressionist whispers and eruptive expressions of pain, is impeccably tailored to Padmore’s voice and style.

Though beautiful, it wasn’t the high point of the evening. Gardner’s slow, moody account of the Unfinished Symphony, played with great beauty and depth of feeling, offered fresh insights into a work we sometimes take for granted. After the interval, meanwhile, came Harmonium, John Adams’s mystico-erotic setting, for chorus and orchestra, of poems by John Donne and Emily Dickinson. One of the great conductors of choral music, Gardner was in his element with it in a performance at once tautly controlled yet emotionally uninhibited. The BBC Symphony Chorus sang with terrific passion. Glorious.