MUSIC / Biting the Boulez: Robert Maycock reviews two contrasting performances of Pierre Boulez

Strange contrasts: the Edinburgh Festival, which does not usually have its finger on the pulse of new music, landed Saturday's UK premiere of Pierre Boulez's '. . . explosante-fixe . . .' with the composer conducting the Ensemble InterContemporain. Two nights later the metropolitan Proms gave their tribute concert for him with an early-to-mid 20th- century programme conducted by somebody else, and Boulez himself was nowhere to be seen.

Who is to say that the Proms were not nearer the mark in presenting the Boulez era as history? Edinburgh's was the more glamorous event, drawing a crowd of the great, the good and the curious to the Playhouse. Even if the exotic visiting musicians turned out to be mostly grim men in grey suits, their playing had the poise and flair of those with privileged access to music and composer. Here too the first half was retrospective. The soprano Christine Whittlesey, abundant in confidence, sang the Improvisations sur Mallarme I and II from the 1950s: abstract, elegant and filleted, and steeped in tradition, or at least a tradition stemming from Webern and Debussy brought together. How paradoxically simple Improvisations seems now, not in style but in essence, organising its intricate, esoteric sound-games in its playroom, far away from immediate human experience.

On one level the following 40 years are like a retreat from this extreme position. In Dialogue de l'ombre double, from the mid-Eighties, Boulez was working with a strong and clear external dramatic idea, pitting solo clarinet against its recorded 'double' in restless melodic lines whose manner, if not memorability, was not so far removed from Messiaen. With its synchronised lighting changes, a performance is as much show as substance. And in '. . . explosante-fixe . . .' the surface is even more traditional. Three babbling flutes play against a lithe, light-timbred ensemble whose chains of quick muted brass chords have an instinctive Frenchness and allure far removed from the avant-garde of old.

Even when electronically enhanced or transformed, the near- 40-minute span is restrained in dynamics, and the big musical events and turning-points - the emergence of steady staccato patterns, or a focus on a long-held note - seem underplayed. It's typical of Boulez in all his phases that it sustains the narrow range of timbres characteristic to this work, the teeming invention never conventionally highlighted by drastic changes of colour or weight. That limits its range and power as a purely musical experience.

The roots of the composition lie in a fragment of the early 1970s, and the same source gave rise to Rituel, a BBC commission of two decades ago which stood to represent the composer in the Prom. At the time it sounded like a new departure, with its gongs and steady pulses and great silences. It still does, as delivered by a new generation of players under the steady hand of Andrew Davis. But the feeling that it could have been a one-off has gone in the light of recent pieces, not least the newest. The bolder harmonic and rhythmic character, the clear-cut dramatic forms, even the visual spectacle: all that started here.

Here the first half was about the legacy of Boulez the conductor of Schoenberg and his followers. Now the orchestra plays Schoenberg at least with clarity and, a new thing, every sign of affectionate understanding, or so it sounded with the Lulu Suite (in which Patricia Wise was the eloquent soprano). Schoenberg's rather drier Piano Concerto is another matter, but even so, the performance went way beyond the accurate and dutiful level, catching a light and sometimes playful character as the BBC SO matched the spirit of the soloist, Emanuel Ax.

The Proms continue until Saturday

Correction: Robert Maycock's review of Chabrier's Le Roi malgre lui on Monday suggested the opera had not been performed for a century. The music has been recorded and performed in concert, and in France there have been two productions. Opera North was giving the UK stage premiere. Apologies.