Music’s modernist response to the carnage of the First World War is heard to best advantage in that context. Suddenly, the agitated and staccato rhythms of Casella and Stravinsky make sense, as does the mournful plangency of Debussy or Frank Bridge.

Gifted pianist and scholar Norman Jacobs, artistic director of Music Of Our Time (MOOT), has inspired a clutch of commemorative musical events, one of which was performed in St Nicholas Church on Wednesday lunchtime.

Helen Burford and Norman Jacobs played piano music for four hands and solo piano music. Original composition was varied with transcription and adaption for an exciting programme of contemporary sounds: only perhaps the bittersweet Triste Et Gai from soldier-composer Cecil Coles was purely melodic.

Burford and Jacobs made the rhythmic demands of Stravinsky and Holst look very simple, which they most certainly were not. Most pianists would feel a certain anxiety about having two hands in the right place – organising four hands with contrasting textures, time signatures, registers and with some unfamiliar harmony and musical structure is extraordinarily complex. That new music was greeted by an appreciative audience says much for the presentation and personality of both artists.