There has been much popular music celebrating cars and driving, from the Beach Boys’ 409 to Kraftwerk’s Autobahn, but motor vehicle-inspired orchestral music is rare. Holly Harrison’s Superhighway and Hotwire stand out.

Joe Chindamo’s Concerto del Motore (literally ‘engine concert’) is ground-breaking not only in its theme but also in the way the composer developed it specifically for and with acclaimed ASO principal clarinettist and racing driver Dean Newcomb.

In creating a clarinet concerto for Newcomb, Chindamo was well aware of Newcomb’s off-stage pastime of drift racing, a form of motor sport in which two high-powered cars race around a prescribed circuit at a speed at which they are almost out of control and almost touching – a kind of high-speed vehicular pas de deux.

But perhaps it’s best to put that out of your mind when hearing this fabulous concerto and simply absorb yourself in the music.

Dean Newcomb and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Photo © Carmen Alcedo

The first movement of Concerto del Motore, entitled The First Revolution, opens quietly, with a mellifluous clarinet theme that is then answered by...