For Simon Holt, the mystery of the female body found in an elm tree, which inspired his music theatre work Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm?, continues to haunt him. The Other Side of Silence, for alto flute, viola and harp, was premieredin the Nash Ensmble's Pittville recital based around Schumann.

Taking its title from a line in George Eliot's Middlemarch, it explores the world beyond: the place Holt feels Bella, as the body was named, must now be. This hinterland is initially benign, but gradually becomes inhabited by more sinister presences. The playing could hardly be bettered, but the theatrical gestures that seem to be vestiges of the original - Laurence Power turning his back and then delivering the final movement as a viola solo - didn't add to the music's drama.

Thea Musgrave's octet Lamenting with Ariadne, which opened the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group's concert at the town hall, had a similar though less contrived element of staging. A clarion trumpet, as Dionysus, was heard offstage before inspiring a celebration to console the grieving viola of Ariadne.

Two short pieces for violin and cimbalom written in 1987 by Gerard McBurney attuned the ear for his new sextet, A Folder of Leaves, which adds the cimbalom and harp to a family of strings. The five pieces premiered conjured an atmosphere both allusive and elusive, auguring well for McBurney's eventual longer sequence.

Composer Brett Dean gave a searing performance of his solo work Intimate Decisions, paving the way for Gyorgy Kurtag's Scenes From a Novel. In his setting of 15 Russian poems by Rimma Blas, Kurtag creates something between dramatic scena and cabaret; here, Nicole Tibbels' subtle characterisation of a woman's torment made a satisfying entity of its enigmatic fragments.