MUSIC / New wine, old bottles: Jan Smaczny on an eclectic mix of freshness and virtuosity in Birmingham

Musical life in Birmingham during the last two weeks has been awash with novelties: premieres from the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, the Towards the Millennium Festival pursuing its mercurial way through the Thirties, not to mention the first performance in the city of Schumann's Fourth Symphony - well, sort of.

This last was Nikolaus Harnoncourt's reconstruction of the slimline, and rarely heard, early version of the work. For those who take the view that Schumann's orchestration is only safe when tarted up by Mahler, this performance must have been a revelation: the Trio of the Scherzo showed us that Schumann could be the equal of Tchaikovsky when it came to orchestral subtlety. Gilded by an incandescent performance by the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, this new image of the symphony was an object lesson in the advantages of taking a fresh look at an old favourite.

BCMG offered not one but two premieres in their latest concert, both by Detlev Muller-Siemens. The group welcomed the audience in with a virtuoso performance of Benedict Mason's engaging piece of whimsy, Nodding Trilliums and Curve-Lined Angles. The composer's new arrangement for the group of his London Sinfonietta piece, Tom-a-

Bedlam, exuded confidence. Big-boned and undeniably powerful, it pursued a more or less headlong course in which fragile moments of lyricism were plucked from a fierce, heavily accented foreground. The problem for the listener comes in trying to absorb a sense of structure: various interludes and an extended moment of repose just before the end were an advantage, but did not quite succeed in conveying a pattern.

This difficulty was even more acute in Phoenix, a Sound Investment commission: the first five minutes were superbly confident, the sounds dense though luminous. But, once again, the latter parts of the work lost definition and the rhythmic unisons which eventually emerged from the vigorous texture seemed neither a summation nor a derivation. In the end, the experience was more frustrating than fascinating.

CBSO's view of the 1930s has turned out to be a touch on the eclectic side. Juxtapositions have been intriguing - anything coupled with Varese's Ionisation is bound to seem almost normal - but in general the programmes seem to point up the bewildering variety of the decade rather than plotting a clear path through it.

The first concert of the series packed in a broad range, although in the end some superb performing pushed programme-planning into the shadows. For instance, the slightly tubby comforts of Hindemith's Mathis der Maler Symphony were blown apart by a devastating assault on Bartok's Second Piano Concerto by the orchestra with Andras Schiff.

The lessons of contrast were also to the fore in Ex Cathedra's contribution to the festival. Seven well-drilled children's choirs set the relatively uninhibited joys of Britten's Friday Afternoons choruses against the more starchy, if expertly executed, virtues of Walton, Howells and Vaughan Williams. Still more rewarding was CBSO's most recent concert which fielded the delicious spectacle of Messiaen at his most ecstatic - the Poemes pour Mi radiantly sung by Faye Robinson - rubbing shoulders with Gershwin at his most demotic, A Cuban Overture. The combination spoke volumes about the true nature of musical culture in the 1930s.