Contemporary British music is alive and well. Any doubters would have been reassured by last night's conspectus by the indispensable Nash Ensemble.

The programme did not attempt to negotiate the cutting edge of the younger practitioners, instead presenting a work each, all new or recent, by five senior composers.

The poet Rainer Maria Rilke inspired two strongly contrasted works: Harrison Birtwistle's Orpheus Elegies and Colin Matthews's The Island.

Where Birtwistle matches Rilke's resonant abstruseness with rigorously concentrated gestures and a countertenor line of piercing beauty (the impressive Andrew Watts), the Matthews achieves a subtly evocative effect with alto flute and horn cushioned by three string instruments, all underpinned by low-register pedal points on harp and piano.

His word-setting has a natural and eloquent lyricism, admirably captured by soprano Claire Booth.

Alexander Goehr's Clarinet Quintet (like the Matthews receiving its world premiere) is described by its composer as "austere" but by Goehr's ascetic standards, and as interpreted by Michael Collins and his excellent colleagues, it is a work of mellifluous expressivity verging on hedonism.

If some of our more venerable composers seem to have mellowed as they pass the milestones of life, Mark-Anthony Turnage abandoned his Angry Young Man image years ago for what sounds disappointingly like retro-pastoralism. His string sextet Returning is directed to begin "almost as if frozen" but cowpats are no more interesting for being gelid.

James MacMillan's Horn Quintet invokes the belligerent traditional battle and hunting motifs of the horn, inciting its partners to dissent.

Less predictable is the passage for upper strings of almost Viennese lyricism, an arrestingly beautiful viola solo and the premature departure from the stage of the horn player, his final contribution a distant, muted echo.