Back in the early 1960s, followers of new music in Britain soon became aware that the future would not be entirely dictated by the innovative radicalism of Princeton or Darmstadt – or even by such iconoclastic Brits as Peter Maxwell Davies and Harrison Birtwistle. And anyone inclined to dismiss Nicholas Maw's Scenes and Arias, on its first version's Proms première in August 1962, as a nostalgic pseudo-Delian wallow, was put right by Anthony Payne's enthusiastic contextualization of Maw in this journal a couple of years later. In Payne's analysis, Scenes and Arias triumphantly avoided rambling romanticism, demonstrating a ‘post-expressionist language’ at ‘a new pitch of intensity’, as well as ‘the composer's exceptional feeling for the movement inherent in atonal harmony’.

This conversation with Mauricio Kagel took place on 16 April 2008 in the studio of Kagel's house in Cologne. Just by looking at the shelves one could learn a lot, seeing how Kagel organized his scores. Each box included everything related to a single work (or group of works), including the ‘Ur-Manuskript’ (primordial manuscript), as he called it, as well as the working copy with the corrections that arose during rehearsals and the contract with the publishing house. The studio enclosed an unsophisticated upright piano, a huge desk and a corner to receive visits like mine.

‘Passed by the political censor’ – Commissar Lunacharsky

The new Russian generation of composers in 1920s Russia is widely known as the ‘musical avant-garde’. Maximilian Shteinberg, the professor of the Petrograd-Leningrad Conservatoire, who studied under Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, called his pupils more simply: ‘musical lefties’. The older generation tried to define this new trend that was evolving as the younger generation' explorations in the fields of musical systems, sounds, subjects, etc. Among the radical musical events in 1920s Soviet Russia, the quarter-tone system of temperament takes first place.

• Amsterdam: ‘Étude pour Espace’ Calum MacDonald

• Aldeburgh Festival 2009 Arnold Whittall

• London: Brian Elias and Paul Patterson Martin Anderson

• Cheltenham Festival 2009 Paul Conway

• Southwark: Maxwell Davies and Harle Malcolm Miller

• Petworth Festival: Tavener's ‘Towards Silence’ John Wheatley

• Oxford: Danald Swann's ‘Perelandra’ Roderic Dunnett

• London, RCM: Stokowski's Symphony Lewis Foreman

• London: Finnissy's ‘Transgressive Gospel’ Jill Barlow

• Further reports from London and Chichester Michael Graubart, Martin Anderson, John Wheatley, Malcolm Miller

• Short Circuit Robin Maconie

• Cornelius Cardew: a life unfinished Keith Potter

• Kofi Agawu's ‘Music as discourse’ Colin Clarke

• Shostakovich studies Edward Venn

• Sounding Postmodernism Michael Hooper

• Holliger and Clara Schumann Peter Palmer

• Barrett's ‘Opening of the Mouth’ Tim Rutherford-Johnson

• Recent Elliott Carter discs Rodney Lister

• Thomas Wilson chamber music Paul Conway

• Further reviews Colin Clarke, Bret Johnson, Edward Venn, John Wheatley, Peter Palmer, Guy Rickards, Bernard Hughes