It is always fascinating to dis cover what composers chose when they are given carte blanche to concoct a concert programme. George Benjamin has done more of that than many of his contemporaries, but who would have thought that for the last in the current Endymion Ensemble series of composers' choices, he would come up with Copland and Scarlatti, as well as Scriabin, alongside the more predictable Elliott Carter, Ravel and two of his own pieces?

Benjamin admitted he was putting in a plug for Copland in his centenary year, but still showered praise on the "perfect" construction of the Sextet, a boiling down of his Short Symphony, which appeared in 1936, and perhaps the clarity of line and the lucid formalism are ideals that chime with some of Benjamin's own preoccupations as a composer.

Certainly the unstable harmonies of two late Scriabin piano Preludes would appeal to someone with his acute harmonic sense, while the intricate expressiveness of Carter's song cycle, A Mirror on Which to Dwell, and the lyric simplicity of Ravel's Chansons Madécasses, both sung remarkably well by Eileen Hulse, have the jewel-like concentration that much of his own music prizes.

Benjamin's At First Light, which ended the concert, remains one of his most remarkable achievements, completed in 1982 when he was just 22, and as convincing a demonstration of those qualities - the compelling ear for instrumental colour, the totally personal harmonic world, the sureness of touch in dealing with form - as he has ever written. But his Viola, Viola is a tour de force of another kind, which takes the most unpromising combination of instruments - two violas - and creates a totally gripping world. The lines cross with bewildering complexity, creating an extraordinary trompe l'oreille ; it's as if a whole orchestra of strings is there, each with its own sharply defined musical line. It's cruelly difficult to play, too - the Endymion's two violists, Catherine Manson and Ralph Ehlers, worked miracles.