It's one of the cliches of contemporary music that new pieces receive a handful of performances before being consigned to the vagaries of history. The Birmingham Contemporary Music Group's latest tour gives the lie to this idea, performing pieces that have become cherished parts of their repertoire over the last decade. Three of the pieces in the concert, by Colin Matthews, Simon Holt, and Poul Ruders, owe their lives to the BCMG. Matthews' Hidden Variables was their first-ever commission, in 1989, and with conductor Diego Masson, the players turn this effervescent music into a riotous party piece. It's a witty deconstruction of minimalism, in which fragments of John Adams's Harmonielehre briefly surface, only to be swallowed up by a vicious take on Philip Glass's Glassworks, which in turn dissolves into a paraphrase on Steve Reich's Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ. But there's a serious side to this satire, as Matthews sends up the shallowness of minimalist material, and the piece careers towards its conclusion with a blaring, brazen unison.

Holt's Lilith explores a more sinister musical and emotional world, inspired by the Edenic myth of Adam's first wife, a serpent. Scored for a dark-hued, eight-piece ensemble, the music juxtaposes sinewy clarinet lines with slippery string writing, and Masson and the BCMG players create a malevolent atmosphere. Ruders' ABYSM is another depiction of overwrought intensity, with two imposing, lugubrious movements for large ensemble enclosing a vivid Scherzo for piano and wood-block.

Julian Anderson's endlessly inventive work Tiramisu, and Judith Weir's elusive and dramatic Tiger Under the Table complete the programme. But in a concert already full of fecund musical imagination, these pieces seem like opportunistic inclusions, even if the BCMG's performances startle with their technical assurance and expressive conviction.

· At Oxford Town Hall on Sunday. Box office: 0870 750 0659. Then touring.