Identifying points of reference in Andrew Toovey's work can present quite a challenge. Not only are his musical sympathies unusually diverse and deliberately unaligned to the readymade categories of our recent past (minimalism, neo-Romanticism, new complexity), but the fundamental stylistic ‘gesture’ can as readily be compared to the visual arts as to any music – to the work of Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Robert Rauschenberg or Stanley Hayter.

Arne Nordheim was sixty years old last year. Although he is one of Europe's foremost composers, the event went largely unnoticed outside of Norway, his home country, in the bicentenary of Mozart's death and (to a considerably lesser extent) the centenary of Prokofiev's birth. To be sure, Nordheim was a featured composer in various festivals – Zürich (ISCM) and Huddersfield not least – but in London, allegedly the music capital of Europe, barely a note was sounded. The Proms passed him by (though here Nordheim was in very good company; the 70th birthdays of Robert Simpson and Malcolm Arnold, as well as Einar Englund's 75th, were similarly unmarked). Even Radio 3 failed to allocate him a This Week's Composers slot (unlike Arnold and Sir Arthur Bliss).

At the relatively young age of 43 (which his schoolboyish looks nonetheless belie), Kalevi Aho is one of the best-known of Finnish composers, with a substantial corpus of music to his credit – seven symphonies and other orchestral pieces, two operas and several smaller vocal works, three concertos (for violin, cello and for piano), and a healthy amount of chamber and instrumental music. I visited him in Helsinki last summer, in the offices of the Helsinki Festival, where he has a hand in the planning of the programmes, and remarked first on the richness and sheer vigour of Finnish musical life; anyone visiting Finland will be struck by the fact that it seems to have an awful lot of composers.

The biographical facts about Einojuhani Rautavaara are quickly told, but are highly indicative of two important aspects of both his character and his music; namely his thoroughness of technique and his cosmopolitan outlook. He was born in 1928, the son of an opera singer. He studied composition initially with Aarre Merikanto at the Sibelius Academy, and then went to the United States in 1955 on a scholarship (awarded at Sibelius's recommendation) to study with Copland, Persichetti, and Sessions. Later he went to Switzerland and studied further with Wladimir Vogel, and in Cologne with Rudolf Petzold. In his turn Rautavaara has become much respected as a teacher, and was awarded the honorary title of Professor of Arts in 1971. Since 1976 he has himself taught composition at the Sibelius Academy.

Among composers born in the 1950s, who witnessed the decline of the post-war avant-garde – together with its most cherished principle, integral serialism – the Finn Magnus Lindberg has produced some of the most challenging responses. It is tempting to attach considerable significance to Lindberg's national origins. Born in 1958, he belongs to a particularly vital generation of Finnish composers whose output extends from traditional symphonic forms to experimental creations involving electroacoustic and computer technology. On the one hand, they have benefitted from the example of composers (such as Aulis Sallinen) who emerged from Sibelius's shadow not only by founding a strong operatic tradition, but also by generating their own brand of orchestral music. On the other, several of the younger generation have continued the practice of studying abroad, though without sacrificing their independence from the European mainstream.

Owing to editorial oversight, Malcolm Hayes's review of Pierre Boulez's Stocktaking from an Apprenticeship (Tempo 180, pp. 29–30) was printed with the paragraphs in the wrong order. The paragraph ending ‘… Young Boulez Rampant’ (p. 29) should be followed by the two on p.30 beginning “This edition follows …’ and ending ‘… and that's that’. The text then proceeds as on p.29 (‘Virtually everything else …’) to p.30 (’… inevitable creative failure’), and continues from ‘Well, each to his or her own view’ to the end. Our apologies to Mr. Hayes, and to our patient readers. (Ed.)