Jonny Greenwood premieres Horror vacui at his late-night Prom

Jonny Greenwood's first curated Prom, a late-night concert at the Royal Albert Hall on Tuesday, ended with the first performance of Horror vacui, the BBC commission for solo violin and 68 strings that the Proms announced in April. Daniel Pioro, for whom Greenwood wrote it, played the solo. BBC Four is to show a recording of the night on Friday 13 September, Arcana reports, and it is on BBC Sounds now.

The strings echo and delay Pioro's line as he plays it, so that at first the violin sounds as if it is being processed electronically. Some players used plectrums or the backs of their bows; others stamped, slapped their strings and blew into the f-holes of their instruments. They came from the BBC Proms Youth Ensemble and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, under Hugh Brunt.

Earlier in the night Greenwood played too, on tanpura in his own “Water” and muted bass guitar in Steve Reich's “Pulse”, and Katherine Tinker played his solo piano piece “88”, whose score asks for it to be played like Thelonious Monk copying Glenn Gould playing Bach.

Greenwood's note for Horror vacui says he was not trying to copy electronic music. He wanted to show, as Penderecki did in the 1960s, that its ideas could be bettered in colour and complexity with strings and manuscript paper. John Lewis of The Guardian and Barry Creasy of musicOMH both give it four stars, Lewis for its rigour, while Creasy thought it episodic on a first hearing. About 20 minutes in, the biggest chord drew applause from the hall, and a long coda followed that ends in C major, a close Lewis calls startling.

The programme