Radio 3's Fifty Modern Classics

Gavin Bryars's mould-breaking 1971 score Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet is a work which came about almost accidentally, when Bryars found a recording of an elderly homeless man singing lines from a Victorian hymn. Cultural historian Robert Hewison makes the case for why the work is important, and commentary comes from author and musician David Toop.

Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden explains why Silver Apples of the Moon by the American composer Morton Subotnick stands out for him as a classic of early electronic music. Author and journalist Rob Young provides some background to the work, which was created on a Buchla synthesizer at the San Francisco Tape Music Center, and conceived specifically for two sides of an LP.

Cellist Frances-Marie Uitti celebrates the music of Giacinto Scelsi, the Italian composer from an aristocratic background whose work looks to the East for inspiration. Ygghur is Sanskrit for catharsis and is the final part of Scelsi's autobiographical La Trilogia. With commentary from Paul Griffiths.

Pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard champions the music of maverick German composer Helmut Lachenmann and his 1980s work for ensemble Mouvement (- vor der Erstarrung); conductor Richard Bernas explains how the use of unconventional playing techniques created a rich and highly crafted soundworld the composer has described as "musique concrete instrumentale".

Violinist Alexander Balanescu recounts his part in Michael Nyman's groundbreaking score for Peter Greenaway's 1982 feature film The Draughtsman's Contract; while commentator Gillian Moore links Nyman's work to the British experimental music tradition.

Author Paul Griffiths singles out this early work for ensemble by Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen, a sonic evocation of nature which takes its name from a poem by Georg Trakl; Gillian Moore highlights some of the other influences at work, including the pictures of M.C. Escher, one of the piece’s dedicatees.

The soprano Barbara Hannigan celebrates Claude Vivier’s profoundly moving work for soprano and orchestra, Lonely Child. Vivier conceived the piece as one single melody, with the entire orchestra "transformed into a timbre", to create "great beams of colour". Writer Paul Griffiths explains how Stockhausen, Gregorian chant and the traditional music of Bali all contributed to this composer’s distinctive soundworld.

Composer and writer Gerard McBurney nominates the austere and uncompromising Octet by Galina Ustvolskaya, which changed his ideas of modern Russian music; and Gillian Moore highlights the intensity of this work, completed in 1950, in the shadow of the Soviet Zhdanov decree.

Pianist Joanna MacGregor celebrates Harrison Birtwistle’s The Triumph of Time, an orchestral work she describes as “sculpted, dream-like and mesmeric”; Paul Griffiths remembers the London premiere and how it marked a new departure for the composer, and Birtwistle himself reflects on the subject of time in music.

Choreographer Siobhan Davies nominates White Man Sleeps by the South African-born composer Kevin Volans, and describes the experience of her collaboration with the composer; writer Paul Griffiths puts the work in the context of Cologne in the late 1970s; and Volans himself explains how he set out to integrate African and European aesthetics in this piece, which draws on traditional music from southern Africa and is scored for viola da gamba, two harpsichords and percussion.