The veteran Italian composer Goffredo Petrassi died on 2 March, aged 98. Not only was he a vital figure in the development of Italian music in the 20th century, but also had a significant international impact though performances of his compositions, his work with the ISCM and as a conductor and adjudicator. He was especially renowned as a teacher: many important figures in the music of our time studied with him at some period. Here two friends pay tribute.

The aesthetic of fault, failure, breaking off or breaking down is a diverse phenomenon pervading a multitude of areas in daily life, art in general, and medial contemporary music in particular. In addition to its destructive element, an error always allows the opportunity to look behind the façade and to comprehend mechanisms in systems. As soon as a function is impaired or defective we learn more about the operations of that system – be it biology, psychology, informatics or any other branch of science – and this holds especially true for medially conveyed, digital content. In a reality increasingly capitalising on digitally transported content this viewpoint gains growing social as well as artistic poignancy. This article explores the conception and connotation of error in general and, specifically, in the field of digital media before discuss resulting implications for the arts and giving examples of how to harness their attributes. Finally, it also reflects on the author's motivation in approaching the principle of error, and reflects upon how this subject is substantially influencing my own current pieces.

Captured by the 16th-century Indian poetess Mirabai and her works (transcribed by Robert Bly), John Harbison was especially intrigued with the manner in which she combined religion with ritual and eroticism. He has stated:

Her answers involved the ecstatic, the devotional and the artistic, but her independence and resolve and her dancer's vitality led my setting toward narrative and characterization, unusual territory for a song cycle.

The toy piano is fast becoming a concert instrument in its own right, with its own (growing) body of repertoire that has moved well beyond John Cage's 1948 classic Suite for Toy Piano. There are dedicated musicians specialising in toy piano performance all over the world, and numerous composers producing new works written specifically for the toy piano. This unusual miniature instrument provides a respite from the traditional implications of the grand piano, breaks the ice with audiences and allows pianists to perform in locations that would otherwise be inaccessible. In this article the author introduces the history and mechanism of the instrument, performance considerations, extended techniques and approaches to working with electronics, recent repertoire and suggestions for performers and composers. Discussion is supplemented with musical examples.

When Eleanor Knight began researching her libretto for Silk Moth, she had to decide how to frame an opera about honour violence. Meeting women whose lives it had ruptured through the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation, she confronted the usual images that accompany the dozen-or-so honour killings per year in the UK media. Between the ‘old, faded school photos’ that illustrate victimhood and the male perpetrators with ‘blankets over their heads … shoved into waiting police cars’, she saw a gulf of painful complexity. ‘What’, she asks, ‘of the mothers?’.

A performer of Luigi Nono's late works is often faced with crucial questions regarding interpretation and technical details. An important tradition has evolved in performing these works, nevertheless it is not always easy to find the necessary information to play them adequately. This article attempts to answer some of the technical and interpretational questions in the context of Das atmende Klarsein and A Pierre – Dell'Azzurro silenzio, inquietum. Our hope is that it will contribute to the discussion about authenticity and freedom of interpretation and provide flutists with practical information not found in the scores.

MAXWELL DAVIES: De Assumtione Beatae Mariae Virigins; Brass Quintet; Beacons of Hope; Commemoration Sixty; Blind Man's Bluff; Prayer of Thanksgiving in Times of Terror; A Sad Pavan for These Distracted Times. London Sinfonietta c. Oliver Knussen; The Wallace Collection; Central Band of the Royal British Legion c. Ted Whealing; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Central Band of the Royal British Legion, Trumpets of the Royal Military School of Music – Kneller Hall, London Symphony Chorus c. Peter Maxwell Davies; Lucy Shelton, Clare Booth; Choir of Her Majesty's Chapel Royal, St. James' Palace c. Andrew Gant; Pavel Haas Quartet. MaxOpus Custom Compilation CDs.

MAXWELL DAVIES: Naxos Quartets Nos. 5 and 6. Maggini Quartet. Naxos 8.557398

ELLIOTT CARTER: Dialogues; Boston Concerto; Cello Concerto; ASKO Concerto. Nicolas Hodges (pno), Fred Sherry (vlc), London Sinfonietta, BBC Symphony Orchestra, ASKO Ensemble, c. Oliver Knussen. Bridge 9184.

MANSURIAN: Monodia. Viola Concerto (‘…and then I was in time again’); Violin Concerto; Lachrymae; Confessing with Faith. Kim Kashkashian (via), Leonidas Kavakos (vln), Jan Garbarek (ss), The Hilliard Ensemble, Münchener Kammerorchester c. Christoph Poppen. ECM New Series 472 7842 (2-CD set).

Deirdre Gribbin's piano concerto, The Binding of the Years, written between 2009 and 2012, was given its UK première by soloist Finghin Collins with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Alan Buribayev at a Maida Vale Studio concert on 15 March. Its evocative title refers to the gathering and securing of 52 reeds that symbolized the old years in Aztec culture; that civilization's rituals connected with fire and time form part of the inspiration behind Gribbin's new work.

In its unswerving devotion to new music at its most uncompromising, the Flemish Transit Festival represents a model of the kind of festival that has now almost vanished from Britain. Based in the intimate university town of Leuven, the 2012 festival was the thirteenth: 48 hours of music and events concentrated into a weekend, running from Friday night to Sunday (26–28 October). Located mainly in the unprepossessing concrete 1970s STUK arts centre (with surprisingly good acoustics), the 12 events (plus pre-concert talks) followed upon one another with a rapidity that almost negated the opportunity to draw breath, let alone eat in between.

John Cage’s stated opinion regarding the original version of Cheap Imitation – for solo piano – was that it constituted a breach with what he considered the proper role of the composer to be. Despite the fact that the actual pitch content of Cheap Imitation was derived through consultations with the I Ching, and that the rhythmic and metric structures were appropriated from Satie, Cage reserved for himself a great deal of composerly control dictated only by his personal taste: the particular kind of control which, in 1970, ran counter to what he had been doing and writing about for years. In this sense, Cheap Imitation represents a watershed point in Cage’s career, away from the radical indeterminacy of the 1960s and back toward more traditional ideas of notation and composition, containing a balance between elements that are systematized, appropriated, and randomly generated. The work as a whole does not simply re-embrace determinate notation, though Cage’s composed choices are strikingly reminiscent of similar processes from his much earlier works. As William Brooks notes, ‘Cheap Imitation looks and sounds far more like pieces from the early 1940s than like any of its immediate predecessors.’

RICHARD ALLAIN : ‘When I'm Gone’ – choral works performed by Laudibus (Chamber Choir) and National Youth Choir of Great Britain, c. Mike Brewer. Delphian DCD34026.