Apartment House/Sarah Leonard, Almeida at King's Cross, London

Yes yes to Luigi Nono

There are no Hoxton New Music Days this year; I could discover no clear explanation as to why – beyond the inevitable financial reasons, anyway, though I think that's only a part of the story. Instead, John Woolrich has mounted just four concerts at the Almeida's soon-to-be-demolished King's Cross venue, incorporating an Italian theme in more obviously direct tandem with Almeida Opera.

The first of the two concerts covered here was a challenging, all-Luigi Nono event. Those thinking, "Nono a no-no" should have been there to see an almost full house for four works spanning the last three decades of the composer's life.

La fabbrica illuminata for soprano and tape, composed in 1964 to denounce working conditions in a blast furnace, remains probably Nono's best-known composition. Despite the incongruity of this work's avant-garde techniques, and now-dated tape technology, in the promotion of Marxist protest politics, Sarah Leonard's commitment and pure, unforced tone proved to be highly persuasive in this sensitively lit theatrical environment.

The other works were mainly from Nono's last years of composition, though the Almeida's rather shabbily assembled programme notes gave no date for two of them.

Post-Praeludium no. 1 per Donau (1987) combines tuba (the excellent Melvyn Poore, making a welcome return to this country) and electronics, and the tuba-player's own voice, to produce one of the most poetic examples of the composer's exquisite, spare late style: all halos and resonances around simple sounds, lovingly explored.

And after Leonard had sung "Djamila Boupachà" from Canti di vita e d'amore (1962), affecting proof that Nono was unafraid of good old-fashioned modality, the concert concluded with Hay que caminar, sonando (1989), music for two violins (coolly despatched by David Le Page and Patrick Savage) that is as irresistibly inscrutable as the work's title (it means "You have to walk, while dreaming").

I wish that I could be as enthusiastic about the music of Luc Ferrari, the 73-year-old French composer of Italian origin, who apparently delights in spoof autobiography and claims that, when he was a young man, he had to choose between serialism and girls (he chose girls).

But not even the expert attentions of the estimable performers of the group Apartment House could persuade me that his Bonjour, comment ça va? was anything more than a mildly diverting French frolic around minimalism, or that the lengthy Chansons pour le corps was anything but the most trite and banal thing I've heard all year.

The group's doubtless faithful antics on behalf of Sylvano Bussotti's Sette Fogli – graphic scores from 1959 once considered seminal – gave only a jaded, faded impression.