There’s nothing quite like seeing the creator of a work at its performance to remind you that composing is a matter of laying your heart on the line. And if cadences just miss, if ideas fail to coalesce or convince, this is work in progress Floof! (the festival) is not pretentious at all. It’s a model of inclusivity.Though world-premieres were thin on the ground, much of the music (barring Anderson’s Alhambra Fantasy, which seems to be attaining modern-canon status, and Ligeti’s magnificent Lontano, which already has) was entirely new to me. The Lisztian qualities in Alhambra Fantasy, which Anderson wrote without ever seeing the Alhambra, still seem at odds with its air of dutifully ticking the requisite variety of orchestral mood-boxes.

Which made Shir Hashirim – beautifully declaimed by soprano Anu Komsi and the CBSO the following day – all the more surprising. Anderson never loses control (if he did it might be more exciting) but this response to the text of the Song of Songs is arrestingly rich and expressive and the first of his works where I’ve felt that technique is even partially matched by emotional connection. Mauricio Kagel’s Double Sextet, by contrast, was a dry reworking of post-serial ground already covered by the neo-classicists, however winningly played by BCMG’s tireless virtuosi. But few in that evening’s audience would have wanted anything else after Holt’s eco-pavan (1998); a shimmering, shadowy, succinct and reverberant mini-concerto for pianist Rolf Hind that bodes well for this summer’s Aldeburgh/Almeida premiere of his opera Who put Bella in the Wych-Elm? Radio 3 microphones were present throughout, so keep your eyes on the schedules for Floof!a.picard independent.co.uk. I’ll never forget the first time I heard of Marilyn Manson.

I was sitting in Trent Reznor’s room in the Sahara Hotel, Las Vegas, uneasily eyeing a huge bronze be-talonned human hand lying unexplained on the carpet. The Nine Inch Nails singer handed me a CD, entitled Portrait of an American Family, and urged me to listen to it. I looked at the shocky-rocky-horror cover and thought to myself “Nah, I’m leaving that Goth crap behind.” I sold it to the Record And Tape Exchange as soon as I got back to London. Standing on the rooftop of London’s Rouge club, having premiered his Golden Age of Grotesque album to a privileged handful of scenesters, with a megaphone to his mouth, shouting random insults to bemused passers-by, who generally looked up, said “Ooh look, it’s that Marilyn Manson”, then wandered away. (It was reminiscent of that story in The Onion: “Marilyn Manson Now Going Door-To-Door Trying To Shock People.”) Some time in the intervening decade, I had a conversion.

“The Dope Show”, with its codeine-cold glam stomp and its androgynously alien video, hooked me in, and the Holy Wood tour, which I covered for this paper, enlisted me unequivocally to the Manson Army. Many’s the time I’ve kicked myself for that early rejection, but in retrospect, I didn’t miss much (up until Antichrist Superstar, the music mostly sucked).What I’m absolutely certain about – even more so after tonight’s show – is that Manson is the smartest player in rock’n'roll, and one of the most consistently interesting and intelligent artists operating (how many of you, when he popped up in Bowling For Columbine, thought “Here we go, that dumbass pantomime dame who wants to be Alice Cooper”, but went away admitting that he was the most articulate interviewee in the whole film?).Before he’s even begun, bodies are being dragged away. Crowd surfers are clambering through a sea of horned salutes. When he appears, arms flung crucifixion-wide in a batwinged frock coat, there is – almost literally – pandemonium.As his band – all master race-blond in contrast with their black-bobbed singer – strike up “This Is The New Shit”, the atmosphere is that of a Nazi rally This is no accident. Amid the post-9/11 mood, Manson – realising that straightforward dissent would no longer be brooked – cleverly switched to satire.