Knussen/London Sinfonietta, Queen Elizabeth Hall

Ten years ago, Oliver Knussen's 40th birthday bash made clear the esteemed status of this composer, whose career had lacked little. As two London Sinfonietta concerts last Wednesday testified, little has changed; Knussen, going against the pattern of many infant prodigies who lapse into silence or self-repetition, continues to grow as an artist.

Logistical reasons excluded some of his most recent works from the festivities. As it was, the Two Organa of 1994, exhilarating studies in medieval compositional technique matched, in the second, with layered polyrhythms redolent of Elliott Carter, represented his continuing enterprise. Their brief spans contained more than enough to engage the attention, no less so than the succinct Songs without Voices of 1992. With the youthful Océan de Terre, for soprano and ensemble, they also stood for the vocal (and operatic) aspect of Knussen's music, not just in their genesis as "settings" of suppressed poetic texts, but also in their quality of powerfully modulated line, most notably in the cor anglais stele of the last song. It was cunningly prepared by a performance of its antecedent, the canonic duo Elegiac Arabesques, for which we were likewise prepared by Masks for flute and chimes, dating from the composer's 18th year.

Knussen conducted Coursing and Ophelia Dances, key scores from the 1970s, whose proto-classic status these focused readings affirmed. Directed by George Benjamin, musical tributes from other composers took their turn, his own, in which gentle viol-like polyphony resolved into quietly captivating chords, among the most choice. Others were as diverse as the composers whose affections Knussen has inspired. Augusta Read Thomas and Magnus Lindberg were content to flatter the ear, but both the nonagenarian Carter and Alexander Goehr, 70 this year, engaged the intellect as well. Colin Matthews' Flourish, with Fireflies, Turnage's Snapshots and Andriessen's minuscule Very Sharp Trumpet Sonata stood shoulder-high beside Knussen's inventions. From an earlier piano recital given by Rolf Hind and Nicolas Hodges, Julian Anderson's Quasi una Passacaglia and Turnage's Fanfares and Ostinatos, studies in the fragile and the robust respectively, showed how lessons of economy and substance learnt from Knussen, the composers' composer, could extend, like his own music, to the regard of a wider audience as well.