A distinguished musician, having glanced through the programme of the twentieth Festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music held in London this July, asked “Why in a festival of modern music is there so little modern music?”—thus alluding to the large proportion of works by long-established composers.

In a review of the first performance of James Clapperton's The Parliament of four Futtit Beistis, Jonathan Cross described the work's ‘blatant but effective modality’ as being ‘evidently an aspect of Clapperton's self-realignment with his Scottish roots’, and concluded, ‘whatever its origins, the end result is more effective than anything of his I have previously heard’.

In the process of my research on the topic ‘The Soviet Avant-Garde from the 1970s to the present’, I learned that one of the heroes (actually, the heroine) of my studies, Sofia Gubaidulina, had been invited by San Jose State University School of Music for a festival of her music. The annual festivals in the SJSU, called ‘The Annual Guest Composers Series’, are each dedicated to the music of a specific contemporary composer. The guests of previous ‘Series’ were Morton Subotnik (1993) and Mario Davidowsky (1994); the festival in 1995 was devoted to Gubaidulina; George Crumb was selected for the following festival in 1996.

The Webern Collection of the Paul Sacher Stiftung inBasel holds a fair copy of an early version of theDrei Stücke für Streichquartett(1913), comprising the song ‘Schmerz, immer Blicknach über’ together with what later became numbers 1and 6 of the Sechs Bagatellen op.9.This document is highly interesting on many counts:here I will mainly discuss one, the existence of adiscarded ending to the third piece (later op.9no.6). This passage is heavily blacked-out in mauvepencil in the manuscript, but the notes, dynamicsand indications can be discerned with a strong lightand magnifying glass.

• Panufnik the Symphonist Paul Conway

• ‘Moonstruck’ – F. G. Scott Songs Calum MacDonald

• Stephen Dodgson & Nicholas Maw Quartets Peter Palmer

• John McCabe, British Viola Music Paul Conway

• Howard Hanson's ‘Merry Mount’ Bret Johnson

• Othmar Schoeck Peter Palmer

• Dallapiccola Tim Mottershead

• Richard Arnell Paul Conway

• Seriously Sibelius Guy Rickards

• Sadie Harrison Jill Barlow

• Additional reviews by Peter Palmer, Paul Conway, Martin Anderson

Little can be said about music during the last century without encountering the men and women who supported it financially. Pierre Bourdieu's impression that the services rendered freely for the good of society reinforce a symbolic debt between giver and recipient complicates motivations behind patronage. Indeed, applying Bourdieu's theory to altruism in general – here, patronage in particular – highlights what could be thought of as a performance of futility: both giver and receiver understand the tenacious terms yet agree nonetheless to act out the process of reaching equilibrium. In the case of iconic music patron Betty Freeman (1921–2009), her support of the avant-garde seems, at times, to call into question on what side of this ‘performed futility’ she existed. This article considers ways in which Freeman's work as patron of the musical avant-garde allowed her to perform her identity as a woman and mother among a community on the fringe.

MYASKOVSKY: Symphonies Nos. 24 and 25. Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra c. Dmitri Yablonsky. Naxos 8.555376.

The music of Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdóttir has been inspired by nature, not in a manner that results in specific pictorial evocation, but in the sense that her reflections on natural phenomenon are catalysts for explorations of a range of compositional polarities, including flow and stasis, stability and volatility, transparency and opacity, and expansion and contraction. Her observation of droning as a natural state has led to a dynamic creative use of drones that challenges and expands commonly held notions of their compositional potential. The article discusses their use, along with other compositional devices and processes, in the delineation of these polarities and the resulting formal structure of selected works for orchestra and chamber orchestra. These resources include disruption devices and morphing techniques that facilitate overlapping and transformation of layers of material. The particular compositional focus of each piece has led to fresh applications of these resources, imparting a distinct character to each piece and contributing to an ongoing renewal of the composer's compositional palette.

Aaron Copland was an urban American Jew of Russian extraction born – as he memorably remarked –

on November 14 1900 on a street in Brooklyn that can only be described as drab. It had none of the garish colour of the ghetto, none of the charm of an old New England thoroughfare, or even a pioneer street. It fills me with mild wonder every time I realize that a musician was born on that street. Music was the last thing anyone would ever have connected with that street. In fact, no one ever had connected music with my family or that street. The idea was entirely original with me.

Songs without Voices, composed in 1991–2, is a set of four pieces for small instrumental ensemble comprising flute, cor anglais, clarinet, horn, piano, violin, viola and cello, lasting about eleven minutes. It follows on naturally from Knussen's Whitman Settings which preceded it, as three of its four movements derive their main melodic lines from purely instrumental settings of Whitman texts from the collection Leaves of Grass. Indeed the first movement's source text, Soon shall the winter's foil be here, is placed by Whitman in the collection immediately after The Voice of the Rain, the final text of Knussen's Whitman Settings.

At the beginning of the twentieth century there was a turning point in the history of modern music.

The excesses of the romanticists began to be unbearable for many. There were composers who felt: “this road does not lead us anywhere; there is no other solution but a complete break with the nineteenth century.”

Invaluable help was given to this change (or let us rather call it rejuvenation) by a kind of peasant music unknown up till then.

In this interview Gubaidulina discusses her understanding of religion and the way in which it relates to her music, by means of symbolism and metaphor. In particular she speaks of her understanding of the Apocalypse as a book of light, greatly influenced by the writings of Fr Aleksandr Men. She talks about the symbolism of instruments in her work, notably percussion, which she sees as a way to the subconscious; her understanding of the role of modernism in music, and the way in which her work connects with this historical process; and also her use of the Fibonacci sequence. The relationship of her music to liturgy is discussed, as is the double path, apparently contradictory, of the artist who composes both liturgical and concert music. The experience of the composer during the profound changes in music during the 20th century, specifically as regards possible intersections between modernism and spirituality, are also discussed.

The career of any great artist can be divided into broad creative periods denned by discernible traits. Olivier Messiaen is no exception, despte the fact that, when discussing his music, it is now part of the common currency to remark upon the constancy with which he stuck to his idiosyncratic musical language. It is true that some of the techniques and spirit which he used in the first of his works to be published, the Préludes, can still be heard in his final masterpiece Éclairs sur I'au-delà…. Indeed, Messiaen himself encouraged this perception, so that the received wisdom is of the composer as a steady accumulator of techniques for a continually expanding style. On one level, therefore, this is a reasonably accurate interpretation in retrospect of Messiaen's career. However, within this broad quality of consistency, it is possible to detect places where the composer markedly changes direction.

Such was, in substance, one of the most typical replies of Rachmaninoff to his friends, acquaintances, casual visitors and press interviewers, who used to question him year after year about his attitude toward modern music. Naturally, the phraseology and the “tone” of his reply varied in each instance, but its essence remained, under all circumstances, the same.

Hans Pfitzner was born in 1869 in Moscow—where his parents were temporarily residing—and is sometimes described as a German-Russian composer, although in fact he had no Russian blood. He grew up in Frankfurt o/M, where his father was Musikdirektor at the Municipal Theatre. From him he had his first music lessons, and perhaps the environment helped foster his interest in opera and music for the stage. He studied piano with James Kwast and composition with Ivan Knorr—the teacher of Cyril Scott and Percy Grainger—at Hoch's Conservatoire in Frankfurt. After finishing there, he took up the first in a series of teaching and conducting appointments which lasted until the advent of Hitler in 1933. These included a period as Director of Strasbourg Conservatoire, conductorship of the Kaim Orchestra in Munich, and frequent appearances as conductor with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, with whom he also made very notable recordings, especially of the Beethoven symphonies—performances which rank with the finest I have ever heard. Strasbourg University honoured him in 1913 with the degree of Ph.D., and in the same year he was married—in Canterbury, Kent, to which city he and his bride had fled to avoid unpleasant entanglement with Percy Grainger, who considered himself a suitor for the same girl's hand.

BROUWER: Aurolucent Circles (Percussion Concerto); Mandala; Remembrances; Sizzle. Evelyn Glennie (perc), Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra c. Gerard Schwarz. Naxos 8.559250.

BAUER: Lament on African Themes; Concertino for oboe clarinet and strings; Trio Sonata No.1; Symphonic Suite for strings; Duo for oboe and clarinet; American Youth Concerto. Ambache Chamber Orchestra and Ensemble. Naxos 8.559253.

KIM: Violin Concerto; Dialogues for piano and orchestra; Cornet for narrator and orchestra. Cecylia Arzewski (vln), William Wolfram (pno), Robert Kim (narr), RTE National Symphony Orchestra c. Scott Yoo. Naxos 8.559226.

LEVY: Symphony No. 3; Cello Concerto No. 2; Rondo Tarantella; A Summer Overture. Scott Ballantyne (vlc), RTE National Symphony Orchestra c. Takuo Yuasa. Naxos 8.559234.

• Boston: Elliott Carter's Horn Concerto Rodney Lister

• London, Barbican: Sophia Gubaidulina's second violin concerto In tempus praesansJohn Wheatley

• London, St Giles, Cripplegate: Pavel Novák David Matthews

• London, Queen Elizabeth Hall: Simon Holt's ‘Sueňos’ John Wheatley

• London, Warehouse: Sarah Nicolls and ‘Hyper Piano’ Jill Barlow

• London, Wigmore Hall: Alexander Goehr 75th Birthday Concert Malcolm Miller

• London, Barbican: Colin Matthews's ‘Reflected Images’ John Wheatley

• London, Royal Festival Hall: Korngold's ‘Das Wunder der Heliane’ Martin Anderson

• London, Spitalfields Festival: Barley, Metcalfe and Barrett Jill Barlow

• London, Sadler's Wells: A Maconchy Operatic double-bill Guy Rickards

• London, Globe Theatre 2007 Season: ‘Renaissance and Revolution’ Jill Barlow

• Reports from California Jeff Dunn, Malcolm Miller