MUSIC / Distant echoes: Jan Smaczny on Cheltenham and Lichfield festival premieres by Musgrave and Berkeley and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group on tour

Festivals come in all shapes and sizes. They also come at the same time. Within the Midlands, Cheltenham is the grandest, in sheer scale, although this year the Warwick and Leamington Festival ran it close in length and variety. Shorter, if not exactly sharper, is the Lichfield Festival, which runs for 10 days rather than the 14-plus offered by the other two. All in all, the riches on offer threaten the mobile culture vulture with a nervous breakdown.

Last Saturday Cheltenham offered the premiere of Thea Musgrave's choral work On the Underground, a mere four hours before Lichfield offered Michael Berkeley's new Viola Concerto - just about time enough to get from one side of the West Midlands to the other, though too bad if you wanted to catch I Fagiolini in Warwick singing a fascinating programme of old and new madrigals.

Another Musgrave first, her bass-clarinet concerto Autumn Sonata had been given in Cheltenham a few days before. So effective was her use of the instrument that one wonders why so few composers have employed its magnificent range and expressive potential. Musgrave took inspiration from the Austrian poet Georg Trakl: the mood of much of the work is dark, with menacing militarism energising the major climax. All this was certainly convincing, although nothing was quite as magical as the use of an off-stage bass-clarinet echoing the soloist - a marvellous doppelganger effect that stole the show. Far less convincing was the final materialisation of a quote from Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata - this could be heard coming a mile off in the orchestral texture, but somehow its appearance dissipated rather than clinched the argument. Musgrave herself conducted an incisive performance with fine solo playing from Victoria Soames.

Odd how Lichfield's greatest asset can also be its festival's greatest liability. The Cathedral, standing in one of the country's loveliest closes, is wonderful both inside and out. Evensong of an afternoon is a joy. Concerts in the same ambience can turn into an uncomfortable mush the further back you are from the platform. In familiar repertoire, the thread is easy enough to follow, but for new works the acoustic can spell disaster. Berkeley's Viola Concerto is a serious work - expressive, tautly structured and melodically appealing. The performers, especially the superb soloist, Roger Benedict, took the work very seriously indeed. In Birmingham's Symphony Hall, no doubt, the climaxes would have seemed less congested and the interweaving of lines more logical; in Lichfield, for all the players' earnest endeavour, a great deal was lost to the cavernous, carnivorous acoustic. I look forward to hearing what showed many signs of being a valuable addition to the repertoire in more favourable circumstances.

Where festivals tend to stay in the same location, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group has taken to the highways and byways of the West Midlands for a summer tour. With missionary zeal it is taking contemporary repertoire to community centres, schools and colleges in the region, performing as often as three times a day. I caught up with them at Joseph Chamberlain College in Birmingham where, in temperatures in the high eighties, they gave their all under Daniel Harding to Holt's Lilith and Matthews's Hidden Variables. The heat, and perhaps the prospect of another performance that afternoon, lent their playing astonishing intensity. Their efforts were rewarded with both applause and the reciprocal performance of a clutch of slightly heavy, though awesomely proficient, music theatre compositions by the students of the college.