Anyone wishing an unbiased review should stop reading now, as there is no greater fan of Louis Andriessen and his music. The current score is the last movement of his Trilogy for the last day, which received its UK premiere at the 1999 Proms, with a subsequent performance at the Huddersfield Festival in November 1999. I saw the work in Huddersfield and was completely knocked out! Dancing on the Bones follows the serenely beautiful and meditative Tao, with the inimitable Tomoko Mukalyama as piano, koto and vocal soloist. To follow this serenity with the irreverence of Dancing on the Bones is a typically surreal stroke of genius. Tao is sublime, while Bones contains the following classic line, sung by a children's chorus, "Death is when your circulation stops, your breathing stops, your liver, your kidneys, your stomach, your lungs; you do not crap, you do not piss, you do not think." I can't think of anything else like it!

As expected, there is far more to this than froth and humour: Dancing on the Bones is an orchestral showpiece of the first order, with structural and formal support closely correlated to Saint-Saens' Danse Macabre. The work is taut and the sound world unmistakable.

Interestingly, the entire Trilogy exposes a recent tendency towards preoccupation with death. I recall mentioning to the composer that the Royal Northern College of Music hopes to do a large-scale profile of him and his music (the plans are now well under way). He expressed his delight but reminded me, in an amusing if rather stark manner (rather like Dancing on the Bones, in fact), that we must hurry as he will not be living forever. This work falls into the same category as all Andriessen: I'd travel hundreds of miles to hear it.

Clark Rundell