Although much of the best of Britten's unperformed early music has come to light since his death, there are still a number of substantial works to be discovered. The latest to emerge – appropriately premièred at the Royal College of Music where Britten was a student – is the ballet score Plymouth Town, which he composed during his summer holidays in 1931, following his first year at the College. The idea for a ballet was suggested by Violet Alford, an authority on folklore and particularly Basque dancing, who in July 1931 was a fellow lodger in the house in Bayswater where Britten had a room.

Recently there has been a revival of interest in the music of Richard Strauss, and in Britain more attention has been paid to his lesser-known works. The symphonic poems such as Don Juan and Till Eulenspiegel, along with operas such as Salome, Etektra and Der Rosmkavalier, have never lapsed from the performance and recording repertoires. But the undeserved neglect of pieces such as the Duett-Concertino for clarinet and bassoon, and operas that rarely reach the stage in this country, such as Die Frau ohne Schatten, has begun to be remedied. A new development which can be seen as both cause and effect of this revival is the appearance of books in English dealing with Strauss and his music. These include recent reissues of Norman del Mar's three-volume Richard Strauss: a Critical Commentary on his Life and Works (1962–72, reprinted with corrections 1978) and Michael Kennedy's Master Musicians volume reissued with additional material in 1988. The study by Willi Schuh, whom Strauss chose as his biographer, was issued in 1982 in an English translation by Mary Whittall entitled Richard Strauss: a Chronicle of the Early Years.

The appearance of Shostakovich's Second Symphony on a gramophone record some time ago, and its public performance at a BBC symphony concert in London last October, marked its emergence from a period of over forty years of almost total neglect. Bearing the subtitle ‘To October: A symphonic Dedication’, it was composed in 1927 (two years after the highly successful First Symphony, which had established the composer's international reputation) in response to a commission from the State for a work to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution. But while the score bears as its heading words from the Communist Manifesto, ‘Workers (Proletarians) of the World, Unite’, and the composer's avowed intention is ‘proletarian’, the musical idiom is often far removed from this. The symphony was given its first performance in Leningrad on the 6 November 1927, and as Dmitri Rabinovich, Shostakovich's Russian biographer, says in his book, “got a fairly good press but after a few performances disappeared from the repertoire”.

• Jukebox Blues Robin Maconie

• ‘New Music, New Allies‘ Rodney Lister

• Cornelius Cardew – A Reader James Weeks

Occasionally, in the history of operatic art, great works, with no pronounced revolutionary tendencies, yet models of simplicity, of sincerity, of artistic integrity, have been subjected to the most savage criticism, as unintelligent as it was undiscerning. We remain astounded at the lack of insight, of common-sense on the part of cultured critics. Even la Traviata was held up for censure as “prurient, foul and hideous”; whereas, in the whole of Verdi's work, there is nothing more poignant and sublime than Violetta's appeal: “Dite alia giovane.” Carmen was stigmatized as “grossly vulgar and vile,” whilst Vincent d'Indy—amazed at the aberrations of men—sadly remarked that the “music seemed crazy to nearly everybody.”

Despite an ever-expanding body of literature on Adès's engagement with the music of the past, his use of traditional formal models has attracted little critical comment. That which does exist privileges the relatively straightforward surface articulation of his musical forms over more nuanced accounts. In the case of Adès's sonata forms, this has had at least two consequences for our understanding of his music: first, that too strong an emphasis on syntactical groupings occludes what is happening discursively in the music; and second, that ‘textbook’ models are not the only formal tradition with which Adès's sonata forms engage. Rather, his sonatas bear traces of a rotational model that recalls the examples of Janáček and Sibelius. This article considers how Adès's sonata forms can be constituted not as neo-classical prefabrications but, a posteriori, as a practice that emerges across his career – from the Chamber Symphony and …but all shall be well to the Piano Quintet and Concerto for Piano and Orchestra – from an interaction between traditional syntactical groupings, thematic procedures and tonal plots.

• John Ireland Symposium Mike Smith

• Ligeti's Laments Mike Searby

Broad textures, clear but unforced musical statements, a focus on tone and sound colour – at the 2015 Estonian Music Days festival all these characteristics of music from the Baltic states were much in evidence, yet its many young composers are all taking these ideas in different directions. The result, judging from the opening weekend of the festival, is a collection of works emerging clearly from a singular musical tradition, but energised by continually expanding diversity and invention. The vibrant new music scene here in Estonia belies the country's diminutive size.

Ligeti has largely been understood as an opponent of serialism, though he was deeply entangled with the mid-century Darmstadt avant-garde in the late 1950s and 1960s. As such, appearances of twelve-tone techniques in his works are typically dismissed as borrowed, superficial or juvenile. This article synthesises previous research, original analysis and sketch materials to reassess Ligeti's engagement with dodecaphonic techniques. The Kyrie movement is steeped in Webernian dodecaphony, from the foundational plan to the surface expression of the vocal melodies. Ligeti's use of palindromes also harkens to Bartók's music. In this sense, the Kyrie movement of the Requiem can be understood as a eulogy for both Webern and Bartók, as well as for the dodecaphonic techniques that intrigued Ligeti even as his compositional technique moved far beyond them.

The education and outreach departments that coordinate community and participation projects have become a ubiquitous component of opera houses in the UK over the last 40 years yet rarely do their productions appear on the main stage. This article considers recent projects run by Opera North, English National Opera, Opera Holland Park and Glyndebourne and asks whether opera houses are genuinely committed to connecting communities with opera or treat outreach as no more than a means of obtaining funding. The article explores the history of the development of outreach departments and the potential that community involvement offers as a revitalising force for the operatic artform. A series of interviews with opera professionals brings the debate up to date.

This article seeks to initiate discourse around the vibrant and somewhat uncharted electroacoustic weave that significantly contributes to Ireland's musical tapestry through a consideration of six diverse threads: Softday, Jennifer Walshe, Karen Power, Linda Buckley, Fergal Dowling and Jonathan Nangle. Investigation of Ireland's recent electroacoustic scene will confirm that an emerging DIY aesthetic aligns with international trends of the past decade, with pop-up events, improvisation groups, experimental music collectives and intermedia festivals providing avenues for collaborative and creative expression. It will provide contrasting, yet interconnected examples of what will be termed ‘DIYing’ including a discussion of influences, concepts, practices and brief analyses of works. It is hoped that this article will see the beginning of a wider acknowledgement of the rich musical dialogues that are taking place.

Way back in the mists of time, in the decade when I was a card-carrying Prommer (1977–87), the BBC used to arrange (and maybe still does) a meeting between us regular Prommers and the Controller, Music – the man whose choices governed two months of our lives every year. Robert Ponsonby was the incumbent when I first had a season ticket and John Drummond was at the helm when I left London for a job in Paris. We never had the impression that anything we said made a blind bit of difference, but at least it allowed us to get things off our chests; all the Controller had to do was fend off our questions and comments with the oiliness then customary with the high functionaries of the BBC (they're all wonderful now, of course) and our silence was obtained for another year. (I remember Drummond contemptuously dismissing the music of Respighi as being beneath the dignity of the institution; Roger Wright, I gratefully note, does not share Drummond's snobbish ignorance, but I also note that neither the Concerto gregoriano for violin and orchestra nor Metamorphosen, both orchestral masterpieces, has yet been heard there.)

• LaMonte Young Rodney Lister

• Skalkottas's 12-Note Music Guy Rickards

• Elliott Carter Christian Carey

• Voicing ‘Pierrot’ Stephanie Power

It seems improbable that the Tallis Scholars can have given their first concert 40 years ago: while the rest of us have crumbled, their conductor, Peter Phillips, hardly seems older now that he did when he founded the group. New music has been an increasingly important part of their repertoire over the decades, rubbing shoulders with the Renaissance stalwarts, and so it was gratifying that their anniversary concert should feature two world premières and one first London hearing. The venue on 7 March could hardly have been more imposing: the singers were stationed under the dome of St Paul's Cathedral, the audience radiating out from them towards three of the four points of the compass; and it seemed that most of the British musical establishment had come to pay homage and say thanks.

The feeling of nature I think is what I like so much in Grieg's best things. You have it too & I think we all 3 have something in common.

Delius to Grainger, 10 June 1907.

Spring always means for me a longing for Norway.

Delius to Grainger, January 1914.

A ‘Norwegian Cuckoo’? Well perhaps not Norwegian literally, but certainly figuratively. Perhaps, as we shall see, nothing more than an accidental cadence. Delius thought so, even if Grieg didn't; and it was probably Grainger who inadvertently acted as the go-between.

As it stands at present Bliss's Colour Symphony is a revision made in 1932 of a work dating from 1922. The historical background of the work is the Three Choirs Festival, and especially Elgar, at whose suggestion Bliss produced a work for the Gloucester Meeting. This is Bliss's first symphony. In the chronological list of his works it comes after the Mêlée Fantasque for orchestra and the Incidental Music to The Tempest. It was followed by the string quartet of 1924, the manuscript of which was lost, and the next composition for full orchestra was the Hymn to Apollo, dated 1926. Between the time when the Colour Symphony was written and that when it was revised, Bliss had written a number of works not only musically important but significant because they showed a rather different manner of expression and way of thinking. Among these works was Morning Heroes, a large-scale choral and orchestral composition, in reality a choral symphony (1930). It was after Morning Heroes was finished that Bliss turned once more to the Colour Symphony. He took it in hand afresh and feeling that his grasp of orchestral manipulation had become stronger, he refashioned the whole work, leaving only the third movement in its original shape. In its actual state, therefore, the work is fundamentally different from the original.

Martin Arnold is an experimental composer currently residing in Toronto, Canada. His unique approach to composition originates in the close relationship that he developed with Czech-Canadian composer Rudolf Komorous while Arnold was a doctoral student at the University of Victoria. Martin Arnold's desire to create music both familiar and unfamiliar, known and unknown, generates paradoxical listening experiences that reside on the edges of things. In this article, the author explores a number of these edges and meeting places, especially as they occur within the composer's very singular string quartet, Contact; Vault.

The re-discovery and recent commercial release, on Regis/Forum, of one of my earliest performances of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, cannot help but evoke a mood of piquant personal reminiscence. The recording was made in 1967 at Olympic Studios in London, roughly two years after I first became acquainted with this riveting, endlessly compelling and many-layered masterpiece. The mid-1960s were marked by optimism, eager creative responses to the challenge of the new, and a spirit of idealism that is perhaps difficult to recapture in today's more commercially-driven world.