IT’S pot luck time again. You know the programme in advance – this year, the festival’s 10th, British music rules – though you only find out the performers on arrival. But in this festival everyone’s a winner.

So the events have a title, here Janus, the Roman god of doors and beginnings. Janus typically faces both ways, so the new and the old jostled here. Marking the 300th anniversary of his death, A Purcell Garland has three modern composers’ versions of fantasias by the great man, using the same instruments as Messiaen’s Quatuor. Inevitably Oliver Knussen’s took on extra poignancy, given his early death last month, but it was balanced by George Benjamin in irrepressible mood and Colin Matthews’ chaotic fun.

The same grouping – Roman Mints (violin), Claude Frochaux (cello), Catriona Scott (clarinet) and Adam Johnson (piano) – was equally versatile in Thomas Adès’s characterful Court Studies from The Tempest, and witty in his music theatre piece Catch, with roaming clarinettist.

A string quartet led by Charlotte Scott gave an impassioned, no-holds-barred account of Frank Bridge’s fascinating Third String Quartet, which stretches the boundaries of harmony to the limit in its outer Allegros. But the ensemble also uncovered real piquancy in its slow movement. Oddly, Bridge’s imaginative leaps were reflected in Maxwell Davies’s last Presto (2016), written weeks before he died. Short organ works by Britten and Tippett were cleanly voiced by David Pipe.