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Nearing the close of the season, Deutsche Oper Berlin premieres Rebecca Saunders’ first opera Lash – Acts of Love, a visceral reflection on love and death.

Klangforum Wien finishes a far-reaching excursion into the boldest realms of modern music with a flourish.

Ensemble Explore and Lotte Betts-Dean delight London's Kings Place with captivating sensations of blissful repose.

A quartet of contemporary works in Basel, with Rebecca Saunders' traces proving shocking, but cohesive.

The Birmingham Contemporary Music Group present an ambitious mixture of experimental chamber music and disquieting monodrama. 

For Rebecca Saunders, space is just another tool in her compositional armoury. Ensemblekollektiv performed a new tailor-made version of Stasis for the Akademie der Künste.

Although a British composer by birth, Rebecca Saunders is most respected in Germany, where she has spent much of her working life. Her latest project was an immersive choreographed programme with the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie based around her violin concerto still. 

As a non-composer, I always find it a little disconcerting when composers completely disagree with me about new music. And when I talk to two composers separately, and they offer matching opinions opposed to my own – as happened last night at the Wigmore Hall – I definitely end up feeling slightly wrong-footed.

It’s quite rare nowadays to rock up to a concert having absolutely no prior knowledge of the music you’re about to hear. Ticket prices, an abundance of established concert repertoire, and an understandable reflex to ‘play it safe’ all contribute to our penchant for the known in the concert hall.