In future, those who look to anniversaries as a bulwark against the solvent flow of time will find their thoughts directed at once to Cathy Berberian who died 20 years ago in 1983, and to Luciano Berio, who died in 2003. This is apt enough. Their marriage lasted only fourteen years, from 1950 to 1964. But their creative trajectories were inextricably entwined. One does not get far in discussing the work of one without invoking the other.

Although Israeli performers are widely recognized in the international arena, serious music composed by Israeli composers is far less well known. Yet, throughout Israel's 55-year history to date, contemporary music has attained a remarkably dynamic, thriving impetus despite (and perhaps partly as a consequence of) the harsh realities of daily life. The works of four generations (and a rising fifth generation) of composers in all genres and instrumental combinations may still be known far less than they deserve across the world, yet the amount of new recordings, published studies and performances is encouraging evidence of increasing interest. This article-interview is intended to deepen appreciation of an important repertoire through an introduction to the music and ideas of one of the foremost Israeli composers, the Chicago-based Shulamit Ran, whose unique outlook is influenced by two cultures, those of Israel and America.

In a recent issue of Tempo, you published a letter from Jon C. Mitchell which contained an implication that I, amongst others, had somehow claimed ‘ownership’ of Gustav Holst and his music. I would like to make it clear that I have never made any such claim, and that any such assertions are completely false.

When someone asked Schoenberg if he was indeed Schoenberg, he replied: ‘Someone had to be’.

May I, in the wake of Mark Doran's excellent and searching review of Jan Swynnoe's book on British Film Music (Tempo no. 226: October 2003), make one or two observations of my own?:

An ancient tale is told by an Old Man in a tower. He experiences the story both in his dreams and as his present hopes and fears. L'Upupa appears, a mysterious hoopoe who is the sum of the Old Man's joys. Impetuously he grabs hold of her but she struggles free and manages to fly away. Left behind are a golden feather and a bleeding finger. The Old Man sends his three sons in search of the bird, knowing that neither the eldest, Gharib (‘the Untrustworthy’), nor the second son, Adschib (‘the Fanciful’), can succeed. It is Kasim (‘the Sharer’) – the youngest – who will fulfil the quest, for he is virtuous and wholly without guile. The ensuing developments in this Syrian legend may be quickly enumerated here: tasks are set, songs are sung, and potentates take and release captives, for in sending his sons on such a mission, the father has knowingly endangered their lives. Kasim returns not only with the bird, but also with an angelic Demon who has safeguarded him on his journeys, and Badi'at, a beautiful Jewish maiden. To great astonishment the old man sets free l'Upupa. And although a wedding is announced, Kasim will not stay to marry Badi'at, setting off instead to seek one of the famous red apples of Manda in order to redeem his pledge against the Demon's protection. The end is marked by the beginning, and a quest starts anew.

The title of James MacMillan's Symphony No. 3, Silence, could easily mislead. An avowedly religious work from a devotedly Catholic composer, the symphony does not stand back in contemplative reverence before God. On the contrary, in choosing as his inspiration Shusaku Endo's 1966 novel of the same name, MacMillan has drawn upon a text that admirably meets and mirrors the fundamentals of his own musical personality. Endo's novel deals with Western attempts to convert the inhabitants of 17th-century Japan to Catholicism and their bloody failure. The agents of the Lord are defeated by the violent resistance of the Japanese and the inhospitable terrain. Struggle, hope, grace, martyrdom, defeat. MacMillan's devotees will recognize his trademarks in a dramatic new piece, albeit one whose narrative is rather more oblique than Isabel Gowdie or Veni, Veni Emmanuel.

At its best, Judith Weirs's music makes use of very simple and clear musical ideas with great wit to great effect. This quality is most apparent in pieces which have some dramatic, or at least extra-musical aspect, often connected with some type of folklore or folk music. When the music becomes more abstract, it can also be less lively and less appealing. The Composer Portrait concert which was presented as a preface to the UK première at the Proms on 7 August of her orchestral piece The Welcome Arrival of Rain contained examples of both of these sides of the composer's work. Distance and Enchantment, for piano quartet, is based on Northern Irish and Scottish folk songs, worked into a beautiful and compelling instrumental texture. Sketches from a Bagpiper's Album evokes the sound of the bagpipes and the instrumental and compositional techniques associated with its repertory. Next to these works, Music for 247 Strings, for violin and piano, has much less profile and less personality. Even though it strikingly employs a texture which is a favorite of Weir's, distinctly different contrapuntal lines presented in rhythmic unison, it just doesn't seem to be about much of anything.

Until the world première of Joe Duddell's Ruby on 25 July, I had yet to hear a percussion concerto which didn't trip itself up. I thought it was in the nature of the beast: the orchestra develops some material, which is then passed to the percussion, at which point all development perforce stops. Duddell (b. 1972) solved the problem by turning it on its head, and limiting the orchestral material to what the solo percussionist could handle; the downside is that he necessarily limits the expressive scope of the orchestra. Ruby – the title is simply a rhyming-slang working label that stuck: it's the final part of a trilogy of works written for the percussionist Colin Currie – opens with a vibraphone pattern that suggests a lyrical music-box and soon shows a stylistic affinity with American minimalism, which alternates with slabs of good-natured energy. The slow movement begins with tremolo marimba chords over string lines that drift aimlessly and agreeably, with a more active central section spurred by brief brass figures which trigger rising scalic patterns in the vibraphone. The initial material returns with soft-centred strings above hypnotic vibraphone figuration and is sung to a close by the rapturous sound of bowed vibraphone chords. The finale likewise deals in cheerfully mesmeric vibraphone patterns over a wash of strings and stuttering comment from horns and trumpets; the soloist then offers an improvised toccata on drum-kit backed by forceful rhythms from a near-tutti orchestra. The vibraphone resumes its jolly prattle until, seemingly having run out of things to say, the music just stops dead. Currie, supported by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under the functional Marin Alsop, played it with obvious commitment, and from memory – no small achievement in such motoric music.

In describing the performance of three extraordinary pieces by the Czech composer Pavel Novák, I have to begin by declaring an interest in my capacity as Artistic Director of the Deal Summer Music Festival, at which he was a featured composer. Novák was born in Brno in 1957, and has achieved a high reputation in Moravia, where he is now acknowledged to be the leading composer of his generation. He is not yet well known outside the Czech Republic, although the Schubert Ensemble have commissioned three pieces from him – Lord, We Seek the Song of the Chosen for piano trio (1991); Royal Funeral Procession to Iona for piano quintet (1995); St Mary Variations for piano quartet (2000) – and have played them in Britain and abroad. Novák's teacher, Miloslav IÎtvan, was a pupil of Janáček's pupil Jaroslav Kvapil, and Novák, more than any other composer in Moravia, seems the true inheritor of the Janáček tradition. That tradition remains a vital force in Brno, partly because Janáček is the most local of composers and his music still, and in a vital way, haunts his home town with its Janáček Academy (where Novak studied), and the Janáček Theatre (where Novak played the oboe for a number of years in the opera orchestra) at which Janáček's operas are performed as nowhere else, players and singers alike attuned to the Moravian dialect; partly through the continuing vitality of Moravian folksong, whose spirit and melodic contours inform Novák's music as they did Janáček's.

There would hardly seem to be a composer better placed to write a concerto for orchestra than Magnus Lindberg: his complete mastery of orchestral texture – demonstrated in a string of modern classics, Joy (1989–90), Arena (1994–95), Feria (1997) and Cantigas (1998–99) among them – makes it a wonder he hasn't tackled the genre before now. Indeed, he quietly billed the magnificent Aura (1994–95) as a concerto for orchestra, although in reality it's as good a symphony as anyone has written this past half-century – my suspicion is that the label allowed him to dodge the issue.

Claire van Kampen, the Director of Music at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre on London's Bankside, followed up her jazz score for Macbeth and innovative minimalist style score for Cymbeline – complete with authentic ritualistic temple gongs from Burma – with an intriguing modern score for one of the plays for Season 2003 too.