With the full Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, The Brodsky Quartet, the vast Brighton Festival Chorus, the Purcell Singers, one conductor and a composer, at times it seemed there were more people on stage than in the audience on Thursday.

This meant several clunky changes but it was necessary to realise ambitious works like Tarik O’Regan’s The Ecstasies Above, here making its UK debut.

O’Regan himself introduced the piece with refreshingly goofy charm – shuffling on stage like one of the set changers and receiving a belated applause after announcing who he was. “You haven’t heard the piece yet,” he joked.

Fortunately the work more than deserved the praise. With a solo octet and chorus desolately calling out across the theatre – higher planes speaking to Earth from distant realms – weaving around an energised string quartet at the heart of the stage, it was an absolute pleasure to experience.

Charles Ives’s unnerving The Unanswered Question required the most unusual set-up, with a lone trumpet in the balcony. The piece ached on the verge of silence, while soloists wailed in desperate isolation, but unfortunately the solos were not quite crisp enough to support the exposed form.

Headlining the evening, the gargantuan Harmonium by John Adams was an absolute onslaught of dense sound, akin to complete submersion in surging water.

Similarly, the opening Adams fanfare, Short Ride In A Fast Machine, had cymbals ringing like automotive steam escaping, as every instrument raced to keep up with the beat. It was magically out of control.