The UK premiere of The Hague Hacking, Louis Andriessen's piece for two pianos and orchestra – the novelty in the Philharmonia's prom with music director Esa-Pekka Salonen – turned out to be anything but the extrovert romp one might have expected. The 18-minute score grew from an encore piece for two pianos, and comes with a whole bundle of unlikely musical connections: a dance popular in Dutch nightclubs in the 1990s; a song, O, O, the Hague, which has become the Dutch capital's unofficial anthem; and Liszt's second Hungarian Rhapsody, which Andriessen apparently first got to know through a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

Then there's the idea of hocketing, in which a melody is split between two voices or instruments, so that they play or sing alternate notes. It's a technique Andriessen has used for many years, and here it fuses the two pianos into a single super-instrument, relying on exact co-ordination between the soloists, Katia and Marielle Labèque, who also gave the first performance of this piece in Los Angeles last year.

Yet their virtuosity is not flaunted, and the piece never becomes a brilliant showpiece or gets too carried away with its own rhythmic energy. Even towards the end, when the Hague tune is taken up by the whole orchestra as if harmonised by Messiaen after a bit too much communion wine, it carries its undertow of introspection with it, and never quite lets go.

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Classical music preview: The Hague Hacking, London
    * Andrew Clements
    * The Guardian, Saturday 15 August 2009

Another significant anniversary gets its due acknowledgement at the proms. Louis Andriessen, the most important Dutch composer of the last half century, celebrated his 70th birthday in June, and to mark the occasion, Monday's concert by the Philharmonia under Esa-Pekka Salonen includes the UK premiere of his recent concerto for two pianos. For political as well as musical reasons, Andriessen generally avoids writing for a conventional orchestra, preferring more abrasive wind and keyboard-based sonorities for his hard-edged brand of minimalism, but The Hague Hacking, composed for Katia and Marielle Labèque who premiered it at the beginning of this year, is an exception. Andriessen says it's based upon two tunes, one that he remembered from a Tom and Jerry cartoon, the other a Dutch sing-along chorus about the city of The Hague. Both are deconstructed in the course of the piece which, he says, could be described as a toccata.

Andrew Clements