Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Ionisation, for percussion

An evening of frivolousness and solemnity.

The centrepiece of Nonclassical’s “Pioneers of Percussion” festival was a rousing marathon of a concert at Scala, a large (mostly) rock venue near King’s Cross. It was a rich, varied, high-energy, happily chaotic affair that lasted into the wee hours of the morning.

What drew John Cage and Frank Zappa into the same programme was their mutual admiration of Edgard Varèse, at its most striking in their use of percussion. Somehow I feel Cage would have been delighted to be the one out of step with an otherwise perfectly symmetrical programme. Flanking the interval were performances of Varèse’s Ionisation (1929–31).

Hot on the heels of the Urban Classic Prom came this, the BBC 6 Music Prom. Yet another first in this year’s Proms saw BBC Radios 3 and 6 Music bring together the likes of Cerys Matthews, Laura Marling, Xenakis, The Stranglers, Varèse and the London Sinfonietta, and produce a programme comprising styles that might loosely be described as “alternative”, from the fringes of pop to punk rock via mode

Celebrating the work of emerging artists and their 20th-century heritage, the LSO Futures concert series came to a spectacular close this weekend at the Barbican. In a two-part programme devised by conductor François-Xavier Roth, chamber and orchestral forces reckoned with the challenges posed to the symphonic tradition.

The Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ, Amsterdam’s foremost modern classical music venue, opened the music season with a day dedicated to percussion. The first concert included Stravinsky’s Suite from L’histoire du soldat (1918) and Varèse’s Ionisation (1929-31) and Hyperprism (1922-23).

L’Ensemble intercontemporain et les étudiants du CNSMDP se sont rencontrés pour un concert monographique en deux parties aussi bien construit qu’interprété.