Gwilym Simcock is the new golden boy of jazz/classical fusion. A classically trained pianist, he plays with his own band (Phil Donkin, double-bass, Martin France, drums), and at the weekend found himself with the BBC Concert Orchestra in tow as well. Progressions was his new 20-minute, single- movement piano concerto, which fused with apparent ease the classical concerto format and the improvisations of jazz. The material was unremarkable and didn't achieve lift-off until the release of the final section. Charles Hazlewood, conducting, held it all together.

Simcock also appeared as the pianist in two impressive new BBC commissions from the saxophonist Jason Yarde. The first was an eloquent arrangement of Gershwin's My Man's Gone Now from Porgy and Bess; the second an original six-minute companion piece called Rhythm and Other Fascinations - a teasing collage of musical cross-references from Stravinsky, Bernstein and Gershwin, the three composers featured in the rest of the evening's Prom.

Sunday's star premiere - with the BBC Symphony Orchestra - was Stuart MacRae's Gaudete, a substantial half-hour setting of extracts from Ted Hughes's magnum opus. MacRae, with his uncompromising language, preoccupation with elemental nature and dark, craggy writing, appears to be a true soulmate. In setting eight texts in three long sections, MacRae has thrillingly given Hughes's work a new incarnation. Blood, granite, oak and bone were imprinted anew on the imagination through the heightened experience of music. Susanna Andersson was the soloist: her stratospheric soprano started with a cry almost indistinguishable from the clatter and hushed screams of the orchestra. The jagged, syllabic wordsetting deep-hewed the verse from the constantly quivering, reverberating orchestral air. Through passages of sunblinding and numb valediction, Gaudete ran its course. I can't wait to hear it again.

Michael Berkeley's Slow Dawn, a new orchestral version of his 2005 work for wind band, was a slow orchestral burn, as the tuba sun-god rose from pulsating darkness to light-dappled dance. Edward Gardner conducted in Sibelius's Night Ride and Sunrise, the perfect companion piece for these two premieres, and in Elgar's Enigma Variations with outstanding imagination and authority.

Sunday afternoon's Prom was the weak link: the BBC Singers, conducted by Andrew Carwood, gave a routine performance of the 16th-century Missa Veni Sancte Spiritus by Manchicourt, interspersed disruptively with movements from Messiaen's organ Messe de la Pentecôte, played by James O'Donnell.

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