Hannu Lintu & Paavali Jumppanen

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Pierre Boulez. He composed Rituel in memory of his friend Bruno Maderna. Adams’s snappily-named Slonimsky’s Earbox is also an “in memoriam” tribute to the musicologist Nicolas Slonimsky, whose “wit and hyper-energetic activity” he wished to immortalise. Exotic birds chirp their hearts out in Olivier Messiaen’s Oiseaux exotiques, which he describes as “almost a piano concerto”. It was commissioned by Pierre Boulez, one of his students at the Paris Conservatoire.