Olga Neuwirth is generally regarded as the enfant terrible of Austro-German contemporary music. Three of her pieces formed the second half of Klangforum Wien's Wigmore debut concert; listening to them, you could not help but feel that, far from being rebellious, Neuwirth's work is essentially rooted in certain traditions of inter-war modernism. Her music blurs distinctions between pop and classical in ways that recall Ernst Krenek's and Kurt Weill's obliteration of the boundaries between jazz, classical and cabaret. She also plays anarchically with ideas of indecency, camp, sexuality and gender.

Hommage à Klaus Nomi, Neuwirth's tribute to a Berlin pop star who was her teenage idol, is a joyous celebration of the countertenor as androgyne, potential drag artist and tragedy queen. It consists of jazzy cover versions of well-known arias and songs, wedging the great lament from Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas against standards by Marlene Dietrich and Judy Garland.

No More Secrets, No More Lies, meanwhile, combines fragments of the writings of Paul Auster to form a flippant study of love, loss and survival. Both works were delivered by countertenor Andrew Watts with the poise of a polished raconteur. In between came Spleen, a massive solo for bass clarinet that swerves between lyricism and farting obscenity, gleefully performed by Ernesto Molinari.

The first half of the concert was more equivocal. The centrepiece was Salvatore Sciarrino's extraordinary Exploration of White, in which silence is slowly filled by the nerve-racking sound of fingers drumming on the wood of a guitar and by spectral whispers from flute and violin. Neither Roman Haubenstock-Ramati's First String Trio, nor Rebecca Saunders' Molly's Song 3-Shades of Crimson, a discursive meditation on Molly Bloom's monologue from Joyce's Ulysses, are in the same league, though both were beautifully played. The Klangforum, effectively the Austrian equivalent of the London Sinfonietta, proved to be every bit as good as their British counterparts.