Tonight鈥檚 pocket history of post-war music, reflecting Radio 3鈥檚 Fifty Modern Classics, opens with Ligeti鈥檚 playful 笔辞猫尘别 for 100 ticking metronomes. In Berio鈥檚 solo trombone extravaganza the player employs many extended techniques and at one point turns to the audience to ask, 鈥榃hy?鈥� Xenakis makes lively play out of rigorous patternings and Cage 鈥� whose centenary we mark this year 鈥� removes the idea of a sound source altogether.

Before that notorious provocation there鈥檚 Jonathan Harvey鈥檚 haunting electronic amalgam of a Winchester Cathedral bell and the voice of his boy chorister son, and Louis Andriessen鈥檚 thrilling, hard-Minimalist musical clock.

There will be no interval