MUSIC / The man who tuned the piano: Michael Nyman Band, Bath Festival

Like Rameau or Couperin before him, Michael Nyman has succeeded in catching the note of triumphalism that defined an era. Though he never actually served at the court of Queen Margaret (and would no doubt be aghast at the thought), his music for the films of Peter Greenaway now seems as emblematic of the 1980s as the Lloyds building. Even taken as parody, the stately measures of his mock- Purcell and Anglicised Minimalism come across like the soundtrack to a share issue.

This isn't to diminish the music, which sounds more powerful than ever. Friday's concert, a 'Greatest Hits' package of pieces from his film scores, was one of the hottest tickets of the Bath Festival (in which Nyman is a featured composer).

Shorn of visual accompaniment, the music more than stood alone: the concert score for The Draughtsman's Contract brought memories of the soundtrack flooding back, while those of the film itself remained dim and insubstantial, a confection of wigs and landscape and little else. Water Dances, which once accompanied a Greenaway documentary, has outstripped its origins entirely and now swings like the clappers, complete with reggae rhythm and swooning saxophones.

Nyman even opened one movement with a plangent minor chord that suggested he was about to sing 'Imagine', one of several rock-ish touches. It's as if the music, heard without its cold visual text, can summon up emotions one never thought possible: Nyman stands revealed as a closet romantic.

This was especially so in the music from The Piano. It was on this dream-ticket - Nyman plays art-house smash score live - that the concert had largely been sold and it came as a shock to realise that it was to be played solo (by Nyman on piano, natch) and would pass so fleetingly - barely enough time to get Holly Hunter up to Harvey Keitel's shack even once. But the music proved quite ravishing, and unlocked the floodgate of emotion for the ensemble pieces that followed.

'Memorial' (from The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover) was partly inspired by the Heysel stadium disaster of I985. Described by Nyman as 'death music', it was played by the band as if their lives depended on it. The soprano Sarah Leonard came on for the closing sequence from Prospero's Books and the intensity deepened still further, with a hammer and tongs finale that tested the over-bright sound system to the limit. As Leonard emoted a series of high notes, the band played so hard that the venue threatened to explode. For all Nyman's eclectic influences, there's surely a bad King Crimson album in there somewhere. But, as he here revealed, he is far, far more than the sum of Peter Greenaway's parts.