LSO / BOULEZ Barbican LONDON ***

A concert of two distinct halves: the emotionally challenged versus the emotionally charged. What are we now to make of Schoenberg's pretentious psychodrama Die glckliche Hand? I guess existentialism was once sexy, or dangerous, or both. How interesting that this piece now sounds so much of its time, while Bartok's one- act music drama Duke Bluebeard's Castle speaks as directly, as movingly, to us today as it did then.

The most interesting aspect of the Schoenberg is its use of "inner voices" - the voices that express our "unworldly thoughts" and influence our decisions. Pierre Boulez effectively "hid" the BBC Singers within the London Symphony Orchestra; ...