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A spellbinding journey as Emmanuel Pahud plays a 70-minute solo programme in a near capacity audience in the 1600-seater concert hall.

The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra presents a superb programme executed with power and urgency to herald the return of public music-making at the Pierre Boulez Saal.

The third concert of A Festival of New Music also suggests the conflicts and split personalities which may come from extended isolation. 

The four pieces – all U.S. premières – created a portrait of Boulez minus Boulez, reminding me of a middle school art exercise in which we were asked to draw an egg without any white crayons.

So Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra continue on their odyssey demonstrating for us what Beethoven might mean in the 21st century. Barenboim’s back-to-the-future approach clearly to some seems anachronistic after years in which Beethoven has been the preserve of ‘period’ bands, and in which even the grandest and oldest of orchestras have altered their traditions.

The Klangforum Wien is such a disciplined ensemble that for them ever to be remotely fazed or challenged by a piece, even those works with Ferneyhough-like unfulfillable demands, is scarcely imaginable.