Philip Glass’s Heroes Symphony (1996) was his second stab at creating an extended structure from the songs of David Bowie. In the first piece, Low Symphony, he got away with it by the skin of his teeth but this second instalment runs an already questionable concept into the ground.

The album “Heroes” was released in 1977, marking Bowie’s radical new direction after the androgynous weirdness of the Ziggy Stardust years. Now collaborating with onetime Roxy Music member Brian Eno, the music on “Low” and “Heroes” – the first two albums in his “Berlin Trilogy” – created soundscapes of electronica interspersed with songs and abstract commentaries. The trouble with Glass’s take on this material – once alive with the sound of discovery – is that it becomes stodgy and square, both rhythmically and with the connotation of not sounding at all “hip”. The opening movement decks out recognisably Bowiesque melodic contours with Glass’s trademark harmonies, but already in the meandering second movement the point is made just too emphatically.

The shape and pacing of the music isn’t helped by Alsop’s lethargic tempi and the Bournemouth SO’s fluffy attack. The dramatic opening of the “Sense of Doubt” movement is squandered by a refusal to bite, and the trumpet theme in the next movement sounds ingratiatingly sweet. The Light, written almost a decade earlier, is undoubtedly better. Glass’s characteristically lavish orchestration and shifting modulations are probably over-familiar but at least he’s attempting to cook up something fresh. However, this version is lacking in the pizzazz department again – check out Dennis Russell Davies and the Vienna RSO (Nonesuch, 10/00) for something superior.