BBCSO/Lintu review – ​there’s a good reason these Boulez and Mahler works aren’t often performed

Compelling … percussionists playing Boulez at the Proms. Photograph: Andy Paradise

In an age of hand-wringing over supposedly populist programming on BBC Radio 3 and in a Proms season packed with obvious crowd-pleasers, this BBC Symphony Orchestra concert seemed designed for the diehards. On the one hand: the Mahlerians, drawn by the rare opportunity to hear the composer’s long, early cantata Das klagende Lied, a “concert folk tale” based on a text he penned aged 17, in the original version he completed at 20. On the other: the Boulezians – better catered for than usual in his centenary year – who thronged for his Rituel in Memoriam Bruno Maderna, performed by the same orchestra who premiered it, with Boulez conducting, in 1975.

The fact that Boulez also conducted the first Proms performance of Mahler’s Das klagende Lied (again with the BBCSO) in 1976 presumably encouraged this Prom’s pairing of works. But the juxtaposition did these pieces few favours.