Colin Matthews premiere, Barbican, review: 'intriguing, at times moving' When he was appointed as the BBC Symphony Orchestra's chief conductor, Sakari Oramo declared his intention to bring us a premiere in almost every concert. True to his word, he gave us one here, in the orchestra's first concert of the year. Colin Matthews's Traces Remain was an intriguing and at times moving evocation of the way the past lingers into the present in odd, unexpected corners. It was inspired by the historian Charles Nicholl's recent collection of essays, which hunts for "the glimpse behind the curtain, the episode measured in minutes and preserved across the centuries." Musically the term "glimpse" suggests something fleeting, the whiff of perfume which disappears the moment you catch it. There were many such moments in Matthews's piece. A fragment of Beethoven's song "Adelaide," or something that might have been Sibelius - or possibly Mahler - would suddenly loom up in the woodwind, its outlines clouded in harp and piano and murmuring string figuration. It could all have seemed a bit precious, but Matthews kept that danger at bay by embedding these evocations in a grand 20-minute span. A recurring stark call to attention, and a sense here and there of a ghostly processional, suggested that the anniversary of the First World War might also have been on his mind. Later a Mahler-like regretful farewell assembled itself out of high, threadbare violins, and later still a gravely beautiful song by the Jacobean lutenist and songwriter Robert Johnson finally came into focus. Matthews's own "frame" for these things never seemed so vivid, but that actually added to the piece's melancholy. Compared to that, Schumann's Konzertstück for four horns and orchestra burst out with all the uncomplicated joy of spring flowers. The four principal players of the orchestra flung off the vaulting horn parts with great brio, and behind them the orchestra was no less nimble-footed. After the interval came Beethoven's Eroica Symphony, which was an oddly ambivalent experience. The outer movements fairly zipped along, with the kind of clarity and urgency that the so-called "period" orchestras have made the norm. The Funeral March felt like a throwback to the days when the piece was played in a spectacularly funereal style, at a sombre slow pace, and with all the junctions between sections pointed up. In an old-style performance in the grand manner, that would have been fine; in this context it felt distinctly odd.