I went to this concert last night, by a new young orchestra, and it was excellent.

It began with a very impressive piece for string quartet by a 22-year-old composer I'd not come across before, Colin Alexander - the piece turned out to last 30-35 minutes, in an unbroken span of rather Lutoslawski-ish textures, quite impressively sustained in a sometimes oblique structure. Not perfect, but a big undertaking - one that sounded as if it had probably surprised the composer himself in the course of bringing it into the world - and a bit fiercer, stranger and more stimulating than a lot of music I seem to have heard recently by young composers.

The Holt ensemble piece (Lilith) strikes me as one of his most successful: I sometimes find his music colourful but a bit bemusing structurally, but this seems tighter.

As for Jonathan Cole, I'm more and more convinced every time I hear a piece by him that he really is one of the best British composers under 40. He writes in a fairly 'modern classical' style - elements of Dallapiccola, Carter, and something a bit more 'British' maybe - but the attention to detail is stunning; every note, phrase and rest (lots of meaningful silence!) seems completely considered and assured; there's a real sense that the harmony and phrasing are meaningful and contribute to the relation of parts to whole; and the music can get terrifically loud, exciting and dense (without clotting) when it needs to, which in Assassin Hair - especially the last movement - is quite often.

One of the most enjoyable concerts I've been to for quite a while.

I can see this organisation is a fine idea but it would be nice if they didn't stick so closely to the mainstream I think. (I was excited to see they'd be doing some Xenakis but the piece they're doing is uncharacteristic juvenilia.) Especially when there's such a massive amount of interesting recent orchestral music that the establishment orchestras won't go near.