Morton Feldman/BBCSO, Barbican, London
“Earlier in my life there seemed to be unlimited possibilities, but my mind was closed. I seem content to be continually rearranging the same furniture in the same room. My concern at times is nothing more than establishing a series of practical conditions that will enable me to work. For years I said if I could only find a comfortable chair I would rival Mozart.” Quite when the American composer Morton Feldman made these remarks is not documented, but if “rearranging furniture in the same room” is a metaphor for staying put stylistically, Friday’s all-Feldman programme put paid to this notion.Feldman, like John Cage, drew inspiration from painters and writers, the vibrant New York School of the Fifties and Sixties. Wilfully, he worked as an outsider: “Have you ever looked into the eyes of a survivor from the composition departments of Princeton or Yale? He is on his way to tenure, but he’s a drop-out in art.” We have come far in re-defining “outsider”. Who would have thought Feldman could provide so convincing an antidote to the recent wide-screen Technicolor of John Adams? Back in the Seventies, Feldman’s music aroused strong emotion: his concerts were like prayer meetings, but there were always some who coughed loudly or walked out, and chances were that boos and clapping came in equal measure. On Friday, applause (if muted) from the packed stalls was the only noise to greet the performances.Another measure of changing historical perspective is how sound worlds have merged.

Feldman loathed Pierre Boulez’s systems, yet in Coptic Light (1986), Feldman’s last work for full orchestra, the range of harmonic colour and instrumental timbres, astonishingly recall Boulez, even if Feldman’s quiet stasis is far removed from any Boulez score. Martyn Brabbins and the BBCSO excelled in a diaphanous account.Violin and Orchestra (1978/9), which began the programme, is an anti-concerto that in its hour’s length eschews any traditional sense of instrumental virtuosity. That Isabelle Faust sustained concentration throughout in such fragile, exposed material, divorced of any “cradling” from the orchestra, was virtuosity of a very different kind. Rothko’s Chapel (1971), scored for solo viola (hauntingly performed by Norbert Blume), percussion, celesta, chorus (wordless) and solo soprano (Elizabeth Poole, a virtuoso “hummer”), again revealed Feldman’s fastidious ear.

In its funereal colours, it’s arguably his most expressive work An evening of revelation… although not quite Mozart.Annette MorreauThe Who, Watford ColeseumIn the past 10 years, Pete Townshend has overcome tinnitus and a wrist injury to reinvent himself as the world’s greatest electric guitar player. In the last of the four warm-ups the Who played before its week of benefit shows for the Teenage Cancer Trust at the Albert Hall, the extent of Townshend’s revival is evident from the moment he launches into a windmilling attack on his red Rickenbacker in “Substitute”.The opening salvo wreaks sonic devastation, keyboardist Rabbit Bundrick adds colour but pared down to the essentials the Who are still rock’s very own Big Bang. The bass riffs are a force of nature, stoic silver fox John Entwistle nonchalantly flicking sweat from his fingertips after an exhilarating “Anyway Anyhow Anywhere”. Zak “son of Ringo” Starkey is living his dream by filling the place of the man who gave him his first drum kit, Keith Moon. Roger Daltrey is the aging lunkhead, Townshend’s everyman alter ego, good naturedly threatening to come down the front and sort out a heckler.The first few rows are full of cross-generational testosterone-heavy males, a pool of pent-up frustration and barely repressed violence. This is exactly the world Townshend’s greatest compositions fed off and fought against, and the connection is still palpable.