Italian masters seem habitually to survive to a ripe old age. The proverbial example is Verdi, dying at 87, but Gianfrancesco Malipiero had turned 91 by his death in 1973, and his longevity has now been equalled, and seems likely to be surpassed, by Goffredo Petrassi. Long an eminent and respected figure in Italian musical life, and routinely named in the reference books as a significant 20th-century composer, Petrassi has never been well known in this country. His international reputation was at its height in the 1950s and 60s, and probably reached its apogee here with the London premiere, in 1957, of his Sixth Concerto for Orchestra, commissioned by the BBC for the 10th anniversary of the Third Programme. During those decades he travelled, conducted and adjudicated widely; he was closely associated with the ISCM (and was its President in the years 1954–56); as Professor of Composition at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome, he exercised a powerful influence on his country's musical life. He is especially celebrated as a teacher: his Italian pupils have included Aldo Clementi, Riccardo Malipiero, the film composer Enrico Morricone and the conductor Zoltán Pesko, but composers of many nations have studied with him. Among his British pupils, one need only instance Peter Maxwell Davies, Cornelius Cardew, and the late Kenneth Leighton to see that his teaching was never stylistically prescriptive.

Giacinto Scelsi was a master improviser. He created hundreds of hours of music, which he originally recorded on tape and then had transcribed for various instruments. These transcriptions were made in collaboration with various musicians: the majority by Vieru Tosati, but also Alvin Curran, Sergio Caffaro and myself.

As a setting for the enactment of important or dramatic events, theatre may be located anywhere. The construction of special auditoria to accommodate aspects of theatre as an art form of re-presentation and re-enactment in no way invalidates the concept of a theatrical drama which unfolds in the imagination or in the arena of everyday life. Music, like theatre, may be inspired by real-life situations, but whereas in modern Western civilization it has taken on a life of its own, and is played in the rarefied isolation of concert halls, theatre, being a more concrete form of representational art, has retained much closer links with the outside world.

With the exception of a few small-scale pieces programmed by the more adventurous contemporary music ensembles, the music of Salvatore Sciarrino has not been performed frequently in this country; BBC Radio 3 has given occasional airtime to larger works, but we have yet to hear much of his most important music in any form. This article should act, I hope, as a pointer to readers who might wish to explore his output on disc, which currently is really the only way to do so in this country.

• Schnittke's ‘Faust in Hamburg Ronald Weitzman

• Schnittke's ‘Gesualdo’ in Vienna Ronald Weitzman

• Adams's ‘I Was Looking At The Ceiling’ Matthew Daines

• Maxwell Davies's ‘Beltane Fire’ John Warnaby

• John McCabe premieres Guy Rickards

• Frank Cox and Ferneyhough Ian Pace

• Topologies Ensemble James Erber

• Roger Heaton Ensemble Ian Pace

• Mitchell, Keller, Adorno on Music Antony Bye

• ‘Pyramids at the Louvre’ Kenneth Gloag

• ‘New Perspectives in Music’ Kenneth Gloag

• Webern and the Lyric Impulse Michael Graubart

• ‘Troilus and Cressida’ Michael Oliver

• Goehr on NMC Michael Oliver

• Recent Górecki James Harley

• Holliger and Homages to Sacher on ECM Peter Palmer

• Kevin Volans Quartets Louie Stowell

• Kenneth Leighton organ music Bret Johnson

• Maxwell Davies's ‘Resurrection’ Mike Seabrook

• Messiaen's ‘Concert à quatre’ Christopher Dingle

• Boulez in Webern and Ligeti Christopher Dingle

• Cage and Feldman Christopher Fox

• American Music Bret Johnson

• Marcel Landowski 80th Birthday Edition John Pickard

• Et cetera Guy Rickards