There are new music concerts that stir and challenge, and those that merely provide food for thought, but Birmingham Contemporary Music Group's offering in the Discover Denmark series had elements of both. The first half began with Thomas Adès's Catch, for on-stage piano trio and peripatetic clarinet. Never less than ingenious, Catch swung between moments of refined inspiration and brittle, desiccated cleverness.

It was followed by Hans Abrahamsen's recent arrangements of Three Piano Pieces Op 59, a strange exercise by the father-figure of modern Danish music, Carl Nielsen. Despite imaginative touches of scoring, it was bafflingly bizarre, like musical graffiti scrawled across the face of an old master. Abrahamsen's Winternacht, composed in 1978 before a decade-long creative crisis, showed him on stronger form. At his best, he is a subtle, delicate magician, a creator of liquid melody who also plays with our sense of musical time. Winternacht may not be a perfect work, but it shows why he is a creative force worth taking seriously.

Interesting as Winternacht was, the second half delivered what we had been missing in spadefuls. Poul Ruders's new work Abysm is scored for only 12 instruments, but its three movements have orchestral power and scale. Brooding and obsessive, the two outer movements frame a weirdly mercurial scherzo. And Solar, by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, is another work with strong visceral appeal. As in Abysm, BCMG's playing under Pierre-André Valade was intense and purposeful.

Then came the surprise finale, a tribute to BCMG's departing artistic director Simon Clugston. His directorship has been popular and inspiring, which explains the melancholy, valedictory tone of Colin Matthews's specially composed offering, a sweetly melodious and very English-romantic miniature entitled The Journey Ends Here. As far as BCMG and Clugston's future careers go, I hope that's not the case.