Though in existence for less than a decade, Basle's Paul Sacher Foundation has already achieved an importance as a repository for the music of the 20th century comparable only to the importance of New York's Museum of Modern Art as a storehouse for representative masterpieces of this century's visual arts.

With these words, Pierre Boulez opened the article entitled ‘Sonate, que me veux-tu?’ in 1963. Referring to his Third Piano Sonata – portions of which first appeared in 1955 – Boulez presented his arguments supporting compositions that contain ‘open’ or ‘mobile’ forms. ‘Fluidity of form must integrate fluidity of vocabulary’, Boulez stated.

Britten's Serenade, op.31, for tenor, horn, and strings, was first performed at the Wigmore Hall, London, on 15 October 1943, with Peter Pears, Dennis Brain and an ad hoc orchestra conducted by Walter Goehr. It was dedicated to Edward Sackville-West.

Well, yes, of course: Schoenberg's famous remark was made in America about Charles Ives, not in Britain about Malcolm Lipkin. I actually believe that Lipkin (a genuinely modest man) would be shocked to be called a great composer, and that he is too gentle in outlook to be capable of contempt towards anyone. But Schoenberg's second sentence fits him will, for here is an individual musical personality that has developed over the years into a strong voice. Those years may now be counted in some number, and indeed when Schoenberg wrote those lines on Ives some 45 years ago Lipkin was already studying music with that fine piano teacher Gordon Green (1905–81), and in 1949 he entered the Royal College of Music where he studied counterpoint and harmony with Bernard Stevens and piano with Kendall Taylor.

The 1987 centenary celebrations of the birth of Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887–1959) produced the first readily available complete recording in this country of the Bachianas Brasileiras. These nine suites, though containing some of his most popular pieces, are nevertheless very incompletely known, and deserve some examination. What follows is not a review of the EMI recording, but a use of it to shed light on the urgent need for a proper critical edition of this important composer's major works.

Heitor Villa-Lobos's sole visit to Israel, in 1952, was significant in several ways. During a stay of a few days, he presented himself as conductor of his own works, lectured on his pedagogical ideas by explaining and demonstrating his manosolfa system, and was inspired to compose a symphonic poem based on his impressions of Israel, which he dedicated to that country. Seven years later, in 1959, it was in Israel that Villa-Lobos's Concerto for Harmonica and Orchestra, a work commissioned by John Sebastian, the American virtuoso harmonica player, was first performed.

Durkó is no pianist, but you would never know from the way he writes for the piano, with a meticulous feeling for what makes the instrument musical. This much was evident from a glance at the score of his Concerto when it arrived (‘on approval’, as they say) on my piano last summer. So, too, was the depth of character and nuance in those passages simple enough for me to read at sight - one especially seductive example being a little two-part invention for the soloist, pedantic and wistful, to which a third voice (scored, of all things, for timpani) lends an air of oafish charm.