The Nash Ensemble made its first professional appearance 40 years ago this month, and it has marked the anniversary with 10 commissions. The London premiere of one of those, a piece by Simon Holt first performed at the Cheltenham festival last summer, opened a Nash concert at the Wigmore Hall devoted to English music, though how well Holt fits into that 20th-century tradition is another matter.

English music doesn't get much more English than Peter Warlock's Capriol Suite and Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending, which together with Britten's Serenade for tenor, horn and strings (sung with meticulous detail and shading by John Mark Ainsley) were the familiar items in a long evening. Martyn Brabbins conducted with his usual musicality and flair, and the admirably objective soloist in the chamber orchestra version of the Vaughan Williams was Marianne Thorsen.

More unusual were the five miniatures of Arthur Bliss's Conversations for five players from 1921, and Arnold Bax's 1936 Concerto for flute, oboe, harp and strings, a tedious expansion of an earlier sonata for flute and harp that affects a wishy-washy mix of French influences - folksy Ravel in the first two movements, watered-down Roussel in the finale. The performances were more expert and committed than either work deserved.

Holt's The Other Side of Silence for flute, viola and harp was punchier and far more intriguing. It is a descendant of his 2003 theatre piece Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm?, and takes the settings of three crucial phrases from the earlier work as the basis for its three movements, which get shorter and sparer as their mood becomes more intense. Vestiges of the work's theatrical background remain too; the viola player turns his back on the harp's extravagant music in the second movement and stands to deliver his solo in the finale; it is compelling and rather mysterious.