Performer: Oliver Coates

Stretching minds and musicians in Manchester Collective’s night of strings and electronics.

Anyone who worries for the health of contemporary composition obviously wasn’t at the Southbank Centre this Sunday, where the London Sinfonietta presented a whole afternoon and evening’s worth of new music in and around the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

The Southbank Centre is riddled with cubby-holes, and it was in a particularly tucked-away corner – the “Spirit Level” bar – that a small audience of dedicated sound-lovers heard this exciting concert of morsels and miniatures. Perched in this top-floor bar, our picturesque backdrop to the stage was a dusk view of Westminster.

To call last night’s Nico Muhly extravaganza at the Barbican a concert of two halves would not go far enough. It was more like two concerts, with a surprisingly short gap between them. The first was made up of three new classical works played by the Britten Sinfonia, and the second was a set of arty folk numbers and other chamber miniatures by Muhly and others.

There's classical music, and there's pop. You can throw as many violins into the bridge section as you like, and you can amplify the orchestra all you want as well. It's unfortunate, but a certain divide looks set to stay.

Arriving to Southbank’s Purcell Room after a romantic Sunday evening walk along the river, I was in the perfect frame of mind to hear this excellently conceived concert. A concert that turned out to be both excellently performed and thoroughly enjoyable. The venue has a lot to offer – the Brutalist design belies the comfort and the sharp acoustic that is rarer than it should be in concert venues.