The magic of a name: a full Rachmaninoff Hall was, I suspect, obvious to more or less every regular at the Studio’s performances long before the concert marking the classic’s anniversary. The time of Arvo Pärt’s little bells (tintinnabuli) is hardly likely to pass, but whether the time will come again for his music written before the piano piece Für Alina (1976) – where his fundamentally different (“stripped of everything”) personal style, beloved ever since by countless Pärt devotees all over the world, was first proclaimed – only time will tell. Naturally, the Studio included Fratres, Spiegel im Spiegel and Mozart-Adagio (based on the slow minor-key second movement of a major-key Mozart sonata; the work was written in memory of Oleg Kagan) in the anniversary programme, but I do not think this was purely in pursuit of a full house. It was, rather, to demonstrate the composer’s radical break (in case anyone is still unaware of it), for alongside the “hits” of the 1970s–1990s there was the far less known early (1964) Quintettino for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn – still twelve-tone, though already with tonal inclusions. It was with this witty miniature, in a spirited performance by the ensemble’s soloists (Marina Rubinstein, Anastasia Tabankova, Ignat Krasikov, Maximilian Katenin, Daniil Galuza), that the evening of Pärt’s music opened – in synthesis with rarely performed works by Gubaidulina, Volkonsky, Denisov and Silvestrov. (Of course, I also remember the Studio’s wonderful monographic concerts – for Rădulescu’s 80th birthday, Sciarrino’s 75th and many others – yet the present “Studio” synthesis seems to me a weightier way of marking composers’ anniversaries: both the context contemporary to the figure being honoured and the references to earlier eras are of interest.)