At any point in history there are always a few solid, value-for-money composers who ignore all vogue and convention and just quietly get on with the job of composing the music that is inside them, waiting to be written down. Abjuring all fashions and trends, all movements and isms, they defy the bizarre human compulsion to categorize and pigeon-hole and lump into groups. I have a strong feeling that it is these unclassifiable, dogged individualists who carry the flag of music history forward: who form the handful of composers by whom each epoch is remembered and represented in centuries to come. While second-guessing posterity is one of the more fatuously pointless of human activities, it is a reasonable certainty that John Harbison is one such figure.

Most critical commentary concerning John Adams's 1987 opera Nixon in China focussed on the opera's first act, a parodistic reenactment of the well-known ceremonial scenes associated with the China visit. It appears that Nixon in China is an opera in the traditional mould as Richard Nixon steps down the gangway of the Spirit of 76 to a hero's welcome. Yet beneath this veneer of realism lie rich subtexts. It emerges that what is really going on is a parody (in the satiric sense) of a grand opera, a parody in which issues of cultural representation and gender politics are worked out. These themes are brought to the fore in Acts II and III but have been ignored in most critical commentaries.

• ‘Secret Theatres’ – The Harrison Birtwistle Retrospective Ian Pace

• Holloway's Third Concerto for Orchestra James Webb

• Kurtág 70th Birthday Weekend Malcolm Miller

• Holmboe Paul Rapoport

• ECAT Young Composers' Forum Laurence Hughes

• Ian Pace's Finnissy Series at Conway Hall James Erber

• The Sudwestfunk Experimentalstudio John Warnaby

• Britcomplexity Julian Silverman

• Dickinson's Holst Raymond Head

• ‘Die britische Sinfonie’; Le quatuor en France Martin Anderson

• Sibelius Discoveries Guy Rickards

• Contemporary British Michael Oliver

• Four piano composers beginning with S Calum MacDonald

• Webern's Songs Michael Graubart

• Nono's operas Nicolas Hodges

• Recent Lachenmann discs Ian Pace

• Wladimir Vogel and others Peter Palmer

• Canadian Club Martin Anderson