What does it mean now for a classically rooted music festival to be committed to contemporary work? The first full day of this year's Aldeburgh festival tried to answer this question, beginning with new vocal music in a church setting and ending at midnight with experimental electronica in the eerie setting of the disused Bentwaters airbase, a relic from the cold-war era.

One ensemble straddled both: the vocal ensemble EXAUDI, whose programme in Orford Church featured stylishly sung Monteverdi and Gesualdo pieces alongside music by their modern Italian successors. James Weeks directed deftly convincing performances of dizzyingly complex works from the last few decades by Castiglioni, Nono and Scelsi.

The highlight, though, was the UK premiere of Salvatore Sciarrino's 2001 Responsorio delle Tenebre. Plainsong verses overlapped with responses in which two sparring tenors continued the chant only to swerve repeatedly away from it, conjuring both wrenching emotion and an exciting sense of velocity.

Over at Bentwaters, EXAUDI were one of the acts getting the second annual Faster Than Sound - a six-hour hybrid of music festival and "sonic experiment" - off to a leisurely start with a new amplified work by James Saunders. Elsewhere, sound-and-video installations vied for attention in small bunkers while, outside in the evening sun, cellist Hildur Gudnadottir layered up notes mesmerically within a ring of six giant speakers that looked not unlike military technology themselves.

The most consistently intense musical experience, however, came with a century-old repertoire back in familiar Snape Maltings on Sunday afternoon. Unafraid to take daring vocal risks, baritone Simon Keenlyside gave a programme with pianist Malcolm Martineau that included Pfitzner and early Schoenberg alongside some of Schubert's darker, more muscular songs, crowned by searing performances of Mahler's Um Mitternacht and the transcendental Ich Bin der Welt Abhanden Gekommen.

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