When Boulez was chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the early 70s, he initiated a ground-breaking series of 20th-century concerts at the Roundhouse in north London. Each programme consisted of a new work, a modern masterpiece and one of the classics of modernism. On Sunday, for the third concert in Boulez 2000, the LSO's celebration of the composer-conductor's 75th birthday, the formula was revived with spectacular success.
It was an all-Hungarian affair: the premiere came from Peter Eotvos, the contemporary masterwork was Ligeti's Violin Concert and the modernist classic Bartok's ballet score, The Wooden Prince. The programme was beautifully balanced, full of telling connections: Eotvos's zeroPoints ends with a xylophone flourish that sounded like a homage to The Wooden Prince, while its moments of sensuous wind writing recall Ligeti's textural miracles. The folk melodies that motivate the violin lines in parts of the concerto could not have been so unselfconsciously integrated without Bartok's example.
But neither work is remotely derivative. zeroPoints is a dazzling quarter hour of orchestral virtuosity that repeatedly prefers to start again with new material rather than develop what is already there. It creates a structure that's as quirkily original as it is satisfying. After his distinguished career as a conductor Eotvos's ear for what works in the orchestra is so instinctive - glinting toccatas for strings and percussion, an interlude with saxophones and bluesy muted trumpets, swirling tremolos right across the orchestra - that the images are totally compelling.
There's no shortage of arresting material in Ligeti's violin concerto either. The five movements are concerned with musical uncertainty, whether of pitch (in the retuned strings that blur the solo violin's opening line, or the ocarinas and recorder that destabilise the wind tuning in the later movements) or of tempo, with fast music that sounds slow and vice versa. It's a violinistic piece, indebted to the great concerto literature, and as Christian Tetzlaff demonstrated, a showpiece for a player with the necessary technical equipment.
The LSO made a brilliant showpiece out of Bartok's ballet too, though even Boulez could not disguise the fact that the later scenes are too protracted. But he brought all its colour and rhythmic variety unfailingly to life in music that veers between Wagner, early Stravinsky and what within a few years would become the authentic Bartokian style - there are pre-echoes of works right up to the Concerto for Orchestra, 30 years in the future.
• BBC Radio 3 will broadcast a recording of the concert on March 6.
***** Unmissable **** Recommended *** Enjoyable ** Mediocre * Terrible
