Alexander Raskatov is probably best known for his opera based on Bulgakov’s Gogol-like tale The Heart of a Dog, which reached the London Coliseum in 2010 and was praised for its staging while reservations remained about the enduring quality of the music. As the piano concerto Night Butterflies confirms, Raskatov is an inventive composer of the brief idea. In less than half an hour, he finds room for 12 movements, taking their inspiration from the denizens of a butterfly greenhouse. There are movements suggesting the swift flutter of wings, their lazier stirring, half-glimpsed colours, ghostly shades, elusive hoverings and, in the finale, a Russian song crooned by the soloist (the versatile and virtuoso Tomoko Mukaiyama) that tethers the whole nocturnal scene to a memory of Raskatov’s lost Russian youth.

The orchestra respond nimbly to these fleeting inventions but are of course put to the test more by the demands of The Rite of Spring. Ludovic Morlot directs a vividly coloured performance, so much so that the opening ‘Adoration of the earth’ sounds almost more like Ravel than Stravinsky, whose barbaric celebration is, for all the orchestral virtuosity, somewhat tamed in a tendency to beautify it all. Such crude effects as the muted trombones for the Ancestors sound almost polished, and some of the speeds suggest a quest after excitement for its own sake. But the playing is undeniably brilliant, and expertly controlled by Morlot in delivering what will always remain an orchestral tour de force.