My admiration for Michael Graubart's probing review of Hans Keller's Music and Psychology (Tempo Volume 58, No.227) is, I have to say, a little qualified by some of his censures over my editing. However, I agree that there are real issues at stake, and that some of these go beyond his own demonstrable errors: HK's piece on capital punishment on p. 31, for instance, is not appended ‘without explanation’, for the provenance is explained barely an inch above the text; the translators (Irene Auerbach and myself) are not ‘not named’, but are acknowledged on p. xix; and the New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) will tell him that a ‘congress’ is not just ‘a meeting’ (the Congress of Vienna), but also a place of assembly (the US Congress) and a political movement (Trades Union Congress): from this last point of view ‘Zionist Congress’ is far from ‘misleading’.

• Reviews by Paul Conway, Bret Johnson, Brian Thompson, Peter Palmer, Arnold Whittall, Calum MacDonald, Michael Graubart, Tim Mottershead

In 1986 I made six programmes about The Mysterious Art of the Conductor for the BBC's World Service. These derived from Interviews with nine conductors, among them Pierre Boulez, Colin Davis, Bernard Haitink and Charles Mackerras. Each programme lasted half-an-hour and included music examples. The interviews were much longer, but each was filleted and spliced so as to juxtapose – and sometimes contrast – the views of different conductors on particular aspects of their art. The interview with Pierre Boulez, reproduced here in full, was recorded in Broadcasting House on 25 October 1986. It gave me special pleasure and is, I believe, of special interest.

Creating new works combining live musicians with new technologies provides both opportunities and challenges. The Cyborg Soloists research project has commissioned and managed the creation of 46 new works of this type, assembling teams of composers, performers, researchers and technology partners from industry. The majority of these collaborations have been smooth-running and fruitful, but a few have demonstrated complications. This article critically evaluates collaborative methods and methodologies used in the project so far, presenting five case studies involving different types of collaborative work, and exploring the range of professional relationships, the need for different types of expertise within the team and the way technology can act as both a creative catalyst and a source of creative resistance. The conclusions are intended as a toolkit – pragmatic guidelines to inform future practice – and are aimed at artists, technological collaborators, and commissioners and organisations who facilitate these types of creative collaborations.

The ‘Nocturne’ from Benjamin Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings (1943) presents a number of interesting melodic and motivic features effectively modelled by aspects of diatonic transformational theories. Following a brief review of important transformational operations in diatonic set theory (transposition within Mod-7 diatonic space, diatonic interval cycles, and ‘signature transformation’), this article presents an analysis of the ‘Nocturne’ drawing upon both traditional and recent developments in diatonic transformational theory. Doing so illustrates an intricate compositional technique, one that traces motivic associations in the vocal line, the horn part and the accompanying strings. A close reading reveals that these motivic techniques stem from the generic concept of echoing and reverberation at the heart of Tennyson's poem.

Philip Moore, Organist Emeritus of York Minster was one of the main featured composers at this year's London Festival of Contemporary Church Music, now in its twelfth consecutive year. A week of concerts and services at St Pancras Church in London showcases a number of new works, and this year saw new choral pieces by Gordon Crosse, Diana Burrell and Ed Hughes (whose Chaconne for organ was composed in memory of Jonathan Harvey, who died on 4 December 2012 at the age of 73). The Festival also marked Robin Holloway's 70th birthday, with a concert of his choral works on 17 May.

The above quote, extracted from his L'Opere per Flauto (1977–1990), provides not only a colorful introduction to the effusive imagination of Italian composer Salvatore Sciarrino, but also a preview of what an unfamiliar listener may expect to find in his music. His largely unchanging musical language has slowly yet deliberately – like the four-minute unbroken cello glissando found near the end of his Vanitas for voice, cello and piano (1981)– captured the attention of composers, performers, scholars, and new music enthusiasts for over 30 years. Moreover, examination of Sciarrino's music provokes consideration for fascinating compositional comparisons, particularly in 20th-century Italian music, as his oeuvre demonstrates similarities with, and advancements of, the music of his compatriots. In this article, we will ‘reconnoiter’ the music of Sciarrino on two different levels, by: 1) contextualizing the formulization of his compositional language from developmental and sociological perspectives, and 2) conceptualizing these investigations in All'Aure in Una Lontananza (1977), a work which would perhaps forecast goals of his life output.

The following interview with Pierre Boulez contains arresting statements from the composer, casting new light on his musical and historical thinking. New insights emerge in an elaborate discussion of his compositional techniques in Pli selon pli and other main works. Surprising to some readers, Boulez the modernist here admits his constant dependence on personal choices and musical taste. He gives his views on modernism's intriguing relation to the classical musical tradition. He describes the cultural situation immediately following the Second World War and he discusses the complex relation between ‘life’ and ‘work’. Boulez takes up his experience as a conductor and points to the influence of Wagner, Debussy, and Mahler on his later conception of musical form. He finally airs his opinions on some lighter issues like Parisian culture, early music, rock, and opera.

‘Synthrumentation’ is a technique for the resynthesis of speech with acoustic instruments developed by the composer Clarence Barlow in the early 1980s. Over the past decade instrumental speech synthesis has been thematised by a diverse range of composers (e.g. Peter Ablinger and Jonathan Harvey); however, Barlow's work is rarely accorded the credit it deserves for the pioneering role it played in this field. This article seeks to explain the basic mechanics of the synthrumentation technique and to demonstrate its practical application through an analysis of Barlow's ensemble piece Im Januar am Nil composed between 1981 and 1984. It should become apparent that Barlow never uses synthrumentation in its conceptually pure form, but rather its realisation is always integrated into an overarching musical context, which reflects Barlow's general approach to musical invention allowing different factors to interact.

The oeuvre of Austrian composer Bernhard Lang (b. 1957) is based upon extreme musical repetition. In his Monadologie series (2007-present), short samples of pre-existing music form the starting point for a variety of automatically generated looping and transformation processes. The overwriting of pre-existing music results in the creation of meta-compositions that radically alter the listeners' understanding of the original piece.

Sketching a general overview of the composer's aesthetic beliefs and the compositional strategies originating from them, this article focuses on Lang's Monadologie series. It aims to clarify the relationships between the individual pieces of the series, to analyse the musical techniques used to reinterpret pre-existing scores within a contemporary setting and, finally, to interpret the implications that arise from that procedure. The 2009 Monadologie VII: …for Arnold… functions as a historico-analytical case study, from which a deeper insight into the series' hermeneutics can be gained.

In recent years Liza Lim has emerged definitively as one of the finest composers of her generation. A series of major works, including Ecstatic Architecture, commissioned for the inauguration of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and her third opera, The Navigator have confirmed her possession of a voice that is versatile, evocative, deeply expressive and uncompromisingly modern.

George edwardes was a great man. He was not in any sense an artist, and was curiously insensitive to music, being unable to whistle correctly any of the tunes from his numerous successes. Some of the things he did to music were atrocious, for example the amputation of the opening music from Gypsy Love and the casting of Joe Coyne for the part of Prince Danilo in The Merry Widow.

The relationship between the musical thinking of Gustav Mahler and Peter Maxwell Davies becomes ever more apparent, and in the ‘Second Fantasia on John Taverner's In Nomine’ it takes on crucial importance.

The connection manifests itself immediately in the two composers' attitudes towards ‘surface’. A musical image is an abstraction of psychic content and must be given corporeal identity before it is communicable. Musical composition is the crystallization of the image into specific note-configurations of pitch, rhythm, timbre, register, etc. which taken together comprise the surface of a work. The act of listening then reverses the process by going from the surface back to the image. Composition is translation and listening is retranslation.

• London, Royal Opera House: ‘Promised End’ Tim Mottershead

• Amsterdam: Raskatov's ‘A Dog's Heart’ Alexander Ivashkin

• Glasgow: James Dillon's ‘Nine Rivers’ Paul Conway

• Zurich: Dalbavie's ‘Gesualdo’ Peter Palmer

• Tanglewood Festival 2010 Christian Carey

• Manchester: Friedrich Cerha Kaleidoscope Tim Mottershead

• Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival 2010 Paul Conway

• Further reports from London, Manchester, Birmingham, St Albans Martin Anderson, Jill Barlow, Tim Mottershead, Paul Conway

Q: What is ‘Orango’?

A:Orango is an unfinished satirical opera, sketched in 1932 when Shostakovich was in the middle of writing Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District.

David Matthews has asked us to correct an inadvertent error in his First Performance review of Pavel Novák's Preludes and Fugues performed by William Howard (p. 34). The statement that the work lasts 17 minutes is incorrect: the actual duration is about 80 minutes.

I have been asked on a number of occasions recently whether I felt a heavy weight of responsibility during my work on Elgar's Third Symphony, and if this was an inhibiting factor. The question put me in a rather awkward situation, since a truthful answer was going to show me in a very immodest light. The fact is, my work on the project seemed to lie outside any feelings of awe and moral responsibility – because, quite simply, I was in love with the music and laboured for the sheer joy of it, without thought of ethical issues.