No prizes for guessing one of the themes for the latest Park Lane Group showcase for young artists, which has been a January fixture for more years than many of us would care to remember. As if there were not enough Tippett celebrations planned over the next few months, the PLG has made him one of two featured composers, alongside the Japanese-born, British resident Dai Fujikura; performances of all four of Tippett's piano sonatas are included in the week of concerts. It's a predictable choice for an institution that invariably ploughs the safest of furrows through contemporary music, resulting in performances for a lot of British composers but often making the series a rather parochial affair.
At least the programmes on the opening evening ranged widely, with the Elysian Quartet including a bitty piece by the Peruvian Aurelio Tello, bassoonist Adam Mackenzie tackling a study in extended techniques by Philippe Hersant, and pianist Alissa Firsova (daughter of composers Dmitri Smirnov and Elena Firsova) combining Tippett's First Sonata (made to sound more like Rachmaninov than ever) with her father's String of Destiny, Schnittke's Improvisation and Fugue and her own Scriabinesque The Endless Corridor. Firsova is clearly musical and technically gifted, but everything was either loud or very loud, until one longed for some genuine pianissimo playing.
It's much harder for a bassoonist to make a big impression, but Mackenzie managed it, especially in the Hersant and in Anthony Payne's The Enchantress Plays, where he projected real personality as well as virtuosity. A string quartet, though, can choose from the widest repertoire of all. The Elysians, clearly a group with a real enthusiasm for contemporary music, generally chose well: Stephen Montague's String Quartet No 1 from 1992 is an imaginative melding of string tone and real-time electronics, Phillip Neil Martin's An Outburst of Time got a deserved first London outing after its premiere at Cheltenham last summer; only Fujikura's inconsequential Midnight All Day (about which the programme said nothing at all) was a disappointment.
· Series ends Friday. Box office: 08700 606 096.
