It might seem odd that Britain's most celebrated new-music ensemble should have an annual mini-festival to showcase new music. However, it is badly needed. The London Sinfonietta seems to equate contemporary music with music that was written at the time of its founding, more than 40 years ago; the impetus to reconnect the group with younger composers (and audiences) working today is welcome and necessary.

It was a little unfortunate, then, that well-meaning and heartfelt tributes to Elliott Carter and Hans Werner Henze kicked off the afternoon's two main concerts. But there was still plenty to get excited about, including Tansy Davies' piano concerto, Nature, remarkable for reconfiguring the relationship between soloist (a brilliant Huw Watkins) and ensemble. Oscillating between pensive and pugilistic, its orchestral textures seemed to bleed out of the solipsistic piano material, while recurring thematic worms burrowed their way under the surface, creating a powerful sense of drive.

Davies' work in some ways echoed Gerald Barry's mini piano concerto, Lisbon, a typically eccentric piece in which the soloist (Watkins again) capriciously disrupted the other players, making them dance to its series of increasingly far-fetched parodies. Concluding the second concert, this followed nicely from the American composer Andrew Norman's charming Try, also characterised by abrupt changes of direction and studies in whimsy; much of it sounded like Thames Television's famous ident being progressively deconstructed. This, in turn, was preceded by David Fennessy's 13 Factories, a wonderfully atmospheric and carefully paced work. In it, recordings of mechanical looms mingle with fast and slow oscillations from the instrumentalists and their voices, and with four sine-wave tones, whose purity is gradually adulterated as the piece progresses. Engagingly led by Martyn Brabbins, the performances were good, if occasionally a bit disorganised.

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