Peter Eötvös, who will be 60 next year, has always been a conductor and a composer. The two activities have nourished each other, but until the past decade or so, and particularly until the success of his opera Three Sisters, he was far better known as the former rather than the latter. On Saturday he featured in the BBC Symphony Orchestra's concert in both roles: the first half consisted of two of his own scores, including the first performance of a BBC commission, and in the second he conducted Debussy's two orchestral masterpieces, Jeux and La Mer.
The beginnings of Eötvös's conducting career were nurtured by Pierre Boulez, who appointed the Hungarian as the first music director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain. It was Boulez, too, who introduced Eötvös's zeroPoints with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican in 2000. It is a witty and direct orchestral piece, shaped as a sequence of nine beginnings to a work that is never heard. The instrumental effects are vividly imagined: at one point the double basses imitate the sound of tape hiss by playing tremolos on the bridges of their instruments, and elsewhere clarinets mimic the timing pips used in recording film soundtracks. There are bold climaxes of Messiaenic brass, quickly quenched, and halos of chiming percussion. Every detail is precise, and nothing in zeroPoints outstays its welcome.
The new piece, though, is not so convincing. Jet Stream is a 20-minute piece for trumpet and orchestra, composed for Markus Stockhausen, in whose father's performing ensemble Eötvös began his professional career in the late 1960s. The soloist is shadowed and reinforced by a group of orchestral trumpets placed immediately behind him, allowing sounds to weave in and out of the dappled sounds of the ensemble. The solo writing, hugely demanding in itself, is full of jazzy echoes and Miles Davis-like melodic shapes, especially in the two cadenzas (one improvised, one fully notated) that anchor the structure. The whole thing is beautifully judged for Stockhausen's particular gifts, but ultimately a bit inconsequential, and never meaty enough to leave a lasting impression.
Both works were vividly played by the BBCSO. Their command of Debussy, however, was less encouraging. For all the precision of Eötvös's baton-less gestures, the imagery of Jeux never flickered and darted as it should. The colours of the score seemed muted and undernourished. The orchestra sounded out of sorts; it hardly seems to be thriving under its current chief conductor, Leonard Slatkin.