The music of Jakob Ullmann (b. 1958) is notable for its protracted structural stasis and delicacy; its fusion of rigorously engineered notational systems, abstract graphical elements and Byzantine iconography; and – above all – its unrelenting quietness. This article offers a rare view into Ullmann's compositional practices, with a specific focus upon the role of fragility in the work. Exploring this concept of fragility as a musical feature, this article considers a number of Ullmann's works from the perspectives of the compositions and their scores, the performance and the agency of performers and, finally, how audiences may listen to this fragility. The article concludes with a consideration of the importance of fragility to Ullmann's oeuvre, and of how it might help us to further understand his music.

The electric guitar is one of the most iconic musical instruments of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and, due to its ubiquitous use in much rock and popular music, it has developed a strong cultural identity. In recent years, as the electric guitar has become increasingly common in contemporary concert music, its cultural associations have inevitably shaped how composers, performers and listeners understand music performed on the instrument. This article investigates various issues relating to the electric guitar's cultural identity in the context of Tristan Murail's Vampyr! (1984), in the hope of demonstrating perspectives that will be useful in considering new music for the electric guitar more generally. The article draws both on established analytical approaches to Murail's spectral oeuvre and on concepts from popular music and cultural studies, in order to analyse the influence that the electric guitar's associations from popular culture have in new music.

The music of Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdóttir has been inspired by nature, not in a manner that results in specific pictorial evocation, but in the sense that her reflections on natural phenomenon are catalysts for explorations of a range of compositional polarities, including flow and stasis, stability and volatility, transparency and opacity, and expansion and contraction. Her observation of droning as a natural state has led to a dynamic creative use of drones that challenges and expands commonly held notions of their compositional potential. The article discusses their use, along with other compositional devices and processes, in the delineation of these polarities and the resulting formal structure of selected works for orchestra and chamber orchestra. These resources include disruption devices and morphing techniques that facilitate overlapping and transformation of layers of material. The particular compositional focus of each piece has led to fresh applications of these resources, imparting a distinct character to each piece and contributing to an ongoing renewal of the composer's compositional palette.

The problematic relationship between UK composers and the Darmstadt Summer Courses is well known. Christopher Fox, Björn Heile and Martin Iddon among others have discussed why this platform for discussion and ideological conflict has not been to this country's taste. This article argues, however, that just such an event organised in the UK would enliven and enrich contemporary music making through increased knowledge exchange and collaboration. After exploring how Darmstadt operates within Germany, and its perception in the UK, a concluding tentative sketch will be made of how such a British Darmstadt might begin, and the benefits it would bring.

Tracing moving circles (100 circles for the mind)

Ilan Volkov's Tectonics series continues to break new ground in contemporary music programming and curating. Tectonics has now seen its third edition in Glasgow, where Volkov conducts the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and has also sprung up in other locations to which he has connections – beginning in his home city of Tel Aviv, the series has spread also to Reykjavik, Adelaide and New York. The common theme is a blend of new commissions (usually orchestral works), important recent works, and performances from figures from other areas of avant-garde music making – free improvisation, electronic music and the outer fringes of noise and metal.

The New York Philharmonic Orchestra, under its Music Director Alan Gilbert, spent a week in residence at the Barbican Centre in April, giving four concerts and various other events. Among them was ‘CONTACT!’, a concert of chamber music performed by members of the NYPO in the Guildhall's Milton Court Concert Hall on 18 April 2015. There were five pieces for various small groups. Three were new to the UK, and I will focus on these.

James MacMillan's new St Luke Passion is unusual. No longer does the Passion story end in the death of its principal character; there's a postlude that sees Christ resurrected. Neither is it peopled with singers acting out the traditional confrontations between Christ, Pilate and the High Priest; it starts instead with a brief setting of the Annunciation text found at the opening of St Luke's gospel. Unusual too is the small size of the orchestra – no trombones or tubas, one set of timpani as the sole percussion and an organ. Perhaps most surprising, however, is that the roles of Christus and Pilate, and indeed everyone else, are given to the choruses: a children's chorus for Christ, the other choirs acting as narrator.

The madcap, hallucinatory adventures of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan would seem to offer the perfect musico-dramatic vehicle for Richard Ayres. His instrumental works and first formal opera, The Cricket Recovers (2005), are gleeful acts of polystylistic sabotage that might themselves hail from Neverland; the former are often wedded to some strange, dramatic scenario, and the latter is a fantasy about a depressive cricket featuring a would-be tree-climbing elephant. In Ayres's scores, conventional structures, instrumentation and musical materials are juxtaposed, shaken up and hurled about like toys with the accidental radicalism of the child who innocently asks the questions that adults dare not.

As suggested by its title, Tansy Davies's new opera Between Worlds is more fantasy than a representational depiction of historic events. Co-commissioned by ENO and the Barbican, where it was premiered on 11 April 2015 with a superb cast conducted by Gerry Cornelius (I attended on 21 April), it raises a central aesthetic and political question about the extent to which public figures of our time can be drawn and re-drawn in art. Recent docu-operas, such as Nixon in China, the more recent Anna Nicole and, of course, the highly controversial The Death of Klinghoffer suggest the issue is a live one.

The Linbury Studio Theatre at the Royal Opera House in London has hosted an impressive range of intimate experimental music theatre works over the last few years. The 2014/15 season, for example, has featured prominent premieres of new works by Harrison Birtwistle and David Harsent, and a ballet staging of John Adams' Shaker Loops, amongst a range of other interesting concerts and shows. The late-April premiere run of Matthew Rogers's The Virtues of Things and an early-May staging by Netia Jones of Georg Friedrich Haas's song-cycle on fragments of Sappho, Atthis, showed how well the Royal Opera uses the smaller space and shorter runs common to the Linbury to programme in quick succession such distinctive pieces from across the spectrum of contemporary music. Atthis, which I attended on 24 April 2015, was perhaps the more intriguing of these two shows, since in conception and execution it was so bold; though Virtues has its own qualities, to which I'll get in a moment.

Broad textures, clear but unforced musical statements, a focus on tone and sound colour – at the 2015 Estonian Music Days festival all these characteristics of music from the Baltic states were much in evidence, yet its many young composers are all taking these ideas in different directions. The result, judging from the opening weekend of the festival, is a collection of works emerging clearly from a singular musical tradition, but energised by continually expanding diversity and invention. The vibrant new music scene here in Estonia belies the country's diminutive size.

Following its premiere at the Whitney Biennial in Spring 2014 (for which, with very limited seating, tickets were effectively unavailable), Robert Ashley's last opera, Crash (2014), had a run at Roulette in Brooklyn this April. The composer passed away just before its premiere, leaving us with an elegant final word in a daunting body of work but also with the challenge of situating this opera within Ashley's artistic legacy.

The torch of artistic direction has passed from Matthias Osterwold to Berno Odo Polzer. Under the former, MaerzMusik was unique among the large European international festivals for its focus on interdisciplinary concerts, sound installations, crossover projects and use of digital media. Concerts often took place in alternative venues ranging from Berlin's most (in)famous nightclub, Berghain, to the Hamburger Bahnhof, a train station transformed into a museum of modern art. The home of the festival, Haus der Berliner Festspiele, was almost exclusively employed for sound installations and music theatre performances. One always had to be sure to buy tickets in advance for fear of facing a sold-out concert; the capacity of the alternative venues was often limited.