Barbican, London 5 out of 5 5  Though it is doubtful that he
will ever get around to conducting Poulenc and Britten, Pierre
Boulez does tackle a far wider range of 20th-century music
nowadays than ever before. Ten years ago, few could have
imagined that a Boulez concert would open with Scriabin and
Szymanowski. And yet that is how he began the last of his four
programmes with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican on
Thursday.  Both composers connect with Boulez's fierce
commitment to modernism. Cut through the pseudo-mystical baggage
with which Scriabin surrounded his later works, and there is a
composer pushing at the boundaries of tonality in the first
decade of the 20th century. The way the harmonies revolve and
float in the Poem of Ecstasy is authentically radical, as is its
massive structure, built from the tiniest motivic fragments and
cells. Boulez took it slowly, registering every nuance; there
were moments early on when one doubted if the orgasmic climax
would ever be reached, but it did come