The Britten Sinfonia are brilliant ambassadors for new music and their unfailingly engaging, straight-talking style is all part of Benjamin Britten’s legacy of bringing music to new audiences. What’s more, they are our local band.

Saturday’s concert was all about the enthusiasms of youth, nowhere more so than in Kandinskiana, a new piece by young American composer Jay Greenberg. Inspired by the paintings of Kandinsky, this was music full of assured experiment, starting out with a Copland-like harmonic openness which was quickly seduced into a richly textured world of colour, dimension and contrast. It was a ten-minute ride in a kaleidoscope.

Greenberg’s piece was thoughtfully sandwiched between two works by a young Britten. Reflection for viola and piano, written at 17, is full of a teenager’s uncertainty and unrealised emotion while the Three Divertimenti, written six years later, see the exuberance of childhood through the lens of emotional and compositional maturity.

Britten Sinfonia’s unique freshness of approach was evident in every piece, their precision, commitment and technical virtuosity in every phrase, every note. There is no other ensemble that so flawlessly communicates what music can do.