After a concert of Lachenmann two weeks ago, the London Sinfonietta turned its attention to the other senior figures in contemporary German music. Conducted by Oliver Knussen, the programme included UK premieres from Hans Werner Henze, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Mauricio Kagel (Argentinian-born, but a German resident for nearly half a century), made up of reworkings of existing pieces, recast or reorchestrated by their composers.

Henze's Kammerkonzert 05 was the most straightforward. An arrangement for 15 instruments of his 1947 First Symphony, it's a brittle, spidery work in which fractured neoclassicism jostles with the first stirrings of serial technique in the outer movements, and which then unwraps a luscious viola melody in the central Nocturne.

Stockhausen's Five Star Signs was more perplexing - ensemble expansions of five of the rambling, music box melodies of his 1974 Tierkreis, orchestrated in a strange, almost unidiomatic way, with odd voicings and balances that made no more sense on a second hearing.

Kagel's 1996 Kammersymphonie is more substantial, and intriguing. It began life as 1898, a piece for children's choir and instruments written in 1973 to mark the 75th anniversary of Deutsche Grammophon. In the reworking, it has been transformed into a study in instrumental doublings. The result is essentially a pair of massive two-part inventions, with pairs of musical lines winding through them and scored in such a way that the textures constantly change colour and density. The music is bewilderingly varied, sometimes stealthy and mysterious, sometimes brash and anarchic; it made the deepest impression in an unexpectedly amorphous programme.