Composer: Panufnik, Roxanna (b. 1968)

Peter Broadbent and the Joyful Company of Singers return to the Presteigne festival for an enterprising programme of unfamiliar 20th-century choral repertoire.

Valery Gergiev conducts the unique World Orchestra for Peace in a devastating perfomance of Mahler's Sixth Symphony at the BBC Proms. A Strauss rarity and a European premier were programmed alongside.

The classification of composers into those who write tonal music and those who inhabit the harder-edged shores of serialism and atonality raised its head once again at the first of the three concerts given by the Festival Chamber Orchestra at this year’s Presteigne Festival.

After hearing the Welsh Sinfonia’s last concert in January 2013, I was pleased to have the opportunity to attend their Gala Finale concert this month. This was particularly the case since it included a première of a new composition by Roxanna Panufnik, daughter of Andrzej Panufnik, whose Epitaph I heard finely performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in March.

Contemporary religious music can seem to exist in a different world to the rest of contemporary music, and rarely since Messiaen was in his prime has there been much evidence of it as a really progressive wing of composition. But unlike much new music, new religious music is often written with a clear sense of purpose in mind, particularly when it is intended specifically for liturgical use – and so accusing it of not being wildly bold in terms of style is sort of missing the point. This Saturday evening's concert, part of the London Festival of Contemporary Church Music, was an excellent introduction to several rewarding sacred works.