MUSIC / Hertfordshire Chamber Orchestra - St Martin-in-the-Fields

After The Death of Moses at the Proms, there was more Goehr in London this Sunday: his bittersweet variations of Schubert's song 'Ins stille Lande'. The third piece of an orchestral suite, 'Still Lands' shows a softer, pastoral aspect of this composer's voice. It is a meditation on mortality, though one in which death is not angry or forbidding, but a welcome release.

This ethos is beautifully conveyed in the music: free-flowing variations that gather up the Schubertian mood in a rhapsodic, continuously changing texture. Midway through, the temperature rises: trombones intone a more sinister element. But the piece ends as it begins: with quiet resignation.

In Ravel's G major Piano Concerto, conductor Anthony Halstead and soloist Jonathan Plowright uncovered a rare vein of sardonic humour. The brass section was venomous in its offbeat accompaniment to the opening theme; the woodwind shrieks heralding the bloodcurdling finale made the slow movement a dream of serenity. Whether Ravel intended things this way or not, it made an exciting change from the usual sleek, refined versions that emerge from the recording studio. Here, as in Beethoven's 'Eroica' symphony after the interval, the orchestra played with professional dedication and quality.