Bursting musical barriers

Definitions, however, didn't matter. Nitin Sawhney, a sort of musical Superman, has made an art form out of leaping categories. Last night he cleared them in a single bound.

Surrounded by his closest musical collaborators - tabla maestro Aref Durvesh, violinist Chandru, vocalists Tina Grace and Davinder Singh - Sawhney (and conductor Stephen Hussey) led Britten Sinfonia through a complex programme filled with purity, emotion and beauty.

It was fitting, perhaps, that this multi-award winner had come dressed in an ascetic's grey robe. An enabler rather than a performer, Sawhney let the music and the evocative, if often superfluous visuals (by video remixers Yeast) take the attention.

There was no disguising Sawhney's dexterity: after beating out Steve Reich's Clapping Music with his palms, he gave us The Conference, an exploration of Indian classical time cycles using, simply, voice.

Then it was Britten Sinfonia's turn. Violinist Jaqueline Shave led a delicate interpretation of Reich's Duet; Arvo Pˆrt's Fratres was similarly precise. Two epic pieces by Bollywood composer AR Rahman saw the orchestra swell with requisite melodrama, the Indian idioms apparent in Chandru's long violin solo.

Post-interval, new orchestral arrangements of Sawhney's best-known works - Prophesy, Riverpulse, Homelands - retained their lush, sweeping lyricism and, aided by images of passports and spinning globes, defiant one-world message.

After a quietly virtuosic display on guitar and keyboards, Sawhney left the stage for the UK premiere of his Britten-commissioned work The Classroom, a meditation on childhood that captured both its tumult (gongs, oboes, drum 'n' bass beats) and sense of possibility (xylophones, flute, those trademark strings). Thrilled, we applauded Britten Sinfonia, who applauded Nitin Sawhney, who - delighted - applauded them, and us, right back.

Nitin Sawhney