As a young pianist, whenever I listened to a recording by Artur Rubinstein, the music always sounded wonderfully convincing. But then, when it came down to studying the score, it was somewhat disturbing to find that he often performed the music in ways that were contrary to the score. This experience provoked many thoughts and discussions regarding ‘authenticity’, artistic ‘greatness’, and the changing contexts of performance practice.

Q: Does your music sound differently since you left Georgia?

GIYA KANCHELI: Not only because I left Georgia, but because times changed, the situation changed, the political situation changed. All of this makes itself felt. Right now it is a very difficult time for Georgia, and for almost all of the former Soviet republics, including Russia. All of that means a lot to me, I am not indifferent to what is going on there. I feel as though I've never left Georgia: physically I am in Antwerp, a beautiful city, but at the same time I am ‘there’, in my house, with my friends, and with our and my problems. I have one composition called Abii ne viderem, which I was working on during the civil war in Georgia, in Tbilisi. I gave it such a name because in Latin it means ‘I departed, lest I see’. And even after titling this piece so, I couldn't ‘depart’ for anywhere, I was still there. That is why the music couldn't be the same.… In the 1980s there was one situation, in the 1970s another, but in the 1990s everything has changed, and because of that the music has changed.

The current standing of the Estonian-born composer Arvo Pärt (b.1935) rests almost exclusively on the works he has composed since 1976, the year the composer unveiled the first fruits of his newly-discovered modal formulae, or what has now become known as the ‘tintinnabuli’ style. There is, however, a large, important and up until now relatively unexplored series of experimental works that predate this seemingly radical change of style. For example, Pärt's first orchestral piece, Nekrolog (1960), was the very first piece of Estonian music to employ the 12-note technique, incurring the wrath of no less a person than Tikhon Khrennikov, the all-powerful general secretary of the Soviet Composers’ Union. Indeed at the Third All– Union Congress of Soviet Composers held in Moscow in March 1962 Khrennikov singled out Pärt for criticism.

One recurring theme in the 75-year history of the BBC Singers (and their various predecessors) has been the tension between their role as a model for amateur choirs and their capabilities as a professional ensemble. Their longest-serving director, Leslie Woodgate, who was in charge from 1934 until his death in 1961, was also an important figure in the amateur choral movement; he clearly believed that part of the BBC choruses' role in broadcasting was to demonstrate how part-songs and oratorios, and indeed hymns and psalms, should be performed. But, given the quality of the forces he had at his disposal, Woodgate was hardly likely to turn down opportunities to conduct the first performances of, for example, Britten's A Boy was born and Hymn to St Cecilia, nor decline to prepare the chorus for the premieres of Bartok's Cantata Profana and Webern's Das Augenlicht and First Cantata.

Veljo Tormis, who will be 70 on 7 August 2000, has become – de facto rather than through any external sign of age – the Grand Old Man of Estonian music' He will celebrate the event in an Estonia enjoying its tenth year of liberty, but for the three preceding decades, through most of the dark night of Russian occupation, Tormis's music, based on regilaul, the primitive runic folksong of the Estonian people, was an important repository of ethnic identity.

• Proms: James MacMillan's ‘Quickening’ Ronald Weitzman

• Proms: Louis Andriessen's ‘Trilogy of the Last Day’ David Wright

• Proms: Peteris Vasks' Symphony No.2 (andVasks discs) Robert Stein

• Proms: The Rest of the Premieres Martin Anderson

• Liverpool: Adam Gorb's Clarinet Concerto Ronald Weitzman

• Cheltenham: The Trondheim Soloists Raymond Head

• Wigmore Hall: Sidonie Goossens 100th Birthday Concert Martin Anderson

• Darius Milhaud Anthony Gritten

• Twenty Israeli Composers Malcolm Miller

• EMI's Karl Amadeus Hartmann series Guy Rickards

• Schwertsik's House- and Court-Music John Kersey

• Quartets by Cerha and Ruzicka John Warnaby

• Maxwell Davies's ‘The Doctor of Myddfai’ Geoffrey Alvarez

• David Bedford's Notes for Women Mark Cromar

• Bainbridge's ‘Ad Ora Incerta’ Richard Leigh-Harris

• Jonathan Harvey with electronics Geoffrey Alvarez

• More Women Composers Guy Rickards

• Joly Braga-Santos's Symphonies Bret Johnson

• Piano Music miscellany Peter Palmer