Anything emanating from delectable Aldeburgh will have a welcome from me; the Ulysses Ensemble, heard at the Jacqueline du Pré Music Building on Sunday, have just completed a residency there (their second) which allows them ample rehearsal, performance and experimental opportunities. They are a quintet, all with international reputations and commitments, who first came together in 2003 at another famous musical mecca - Prussia Cove. Dedicated to performing and extending public understanding of the new' and often difficult musical languages of the 20th century, they create so close a rapport through intensive rehearsal that they have no conductor.

Their concert, all of early 20th-century work, demanded an equal concentration from the listener. They began with Schoenberg's Kammersymphonie of 1906, played in the arrangement for five instruments made by Webern in 1922, a single-movement work with variations of pace and scoring, the instruments often used at the top of their range. The themes - if that isn't too old-hat a term - were often taken by the woodwind - Emily Beynon (flute) and the excellent Matthew Hunt on clarinet, though the cello (Alastair Tate) and violin (Ulrika-Anima Mathe) had their share. The solo entries were in contrast to the quiet passages of arpeggios played in harmony.

Soprano Julieanne Klein now joined the ensemble. Ravel's three Chansons madegasses (1926) set prose poems of 1787, purportedly based on Madagascan work (Madagascar had been French territory since the 17th century) and redolent of the imagined South Sea Glamour, beautiful available women and natural guiltless pleasures of that date. The sensuous accompaniment of Il est doux de se coucher diverged sharply from its non-PC sentiments. Was Ravel joking?

Back to Schoenberg and his song-sequence Pierrot Lunaire showing the instrumentalists multi-tasking, and the singer deploying impressive skills in mime and gesture as well as vocal range in this testing piece with 21 songs all very varied in tone, pace and seriousness. I find it odd to choose stanzaic poems, with refrains and repetitions, since the music must override the poetic structure, but that was an extra challenge, undertaken with clarity and force.

The Odyssey ends at Wigmore Hall this weekend, when the soloist will be Christine Schäffer.