Addressing the audience after receiving his honorary doctorate from Birmingham City University, Pierre Boulez was modesty personified. The pillar of musical modernism took his honour, he said, more as a sign of encouragement than a thank you. And the lesson was: “It's never too late to try hard”.

But thumb-twiddling has never been in Boulez's nature. Forty-odd years might separate the cryptic Le Marteau sans maître and the tumultuous sur Incises, the two works dashingly despatched on Friday by Edwin Roxburgh's youthful and gifted Warehouse Ensemble. But you hear the same crystalline mind creating exhilarating beauty from just a few cells of music. Compared with previous incarnations under Boulez, this Marteau was freer in expression, with less hard glitter; but the masterpiece of the 1950s took it in its stride.

There's no twiddling in Boulez's diary, either. These Boulez in Birmingham celebrations came sandwiched between two London Symphony Orchestra concerts celebrating Boulez the conductor. I caught Sunday's feast. The Boulez rigour and clarity couldn't quite lift Schoenberg's opera of the mind, Die glückliche Hand, out of obscurity; but Matthias Pintscher's new work Osiris was a different matter. Though the inspiration was Osiris the Egyptian god, the exploding and mutating sound layers conjured more easily Osiris the planet, 150 light years away. Pintscher is the most scrupulous and imaginative young composer in Germany; he gave us a magic, poetic tapestry whose spell only dimmed once the clock kept on ticking, up to 25 minutes.

Chiselled to perfection, the LSO never wavered. Special bouquets, please, for the contra-bassoon's magnificent burbles and the solo trumpeter's molten lava.

Then came a greater opera, Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle. Boulez's trenchant command and the LSO's virtuosity took care of most orchestral treasures: the fifth door's grand opening faltered only through the lack of a roaring organ. Peter Fried's Bluebeard displayed the questionable charm this wife- collector needs. As his new acquisition, Michelle DeYoung hit the vocal heights satisfactorily; a pity, though, that her facial expressions suggested Shirley Temple discovering a tear in her favourite dress. Afterwards, cheers of gratitude rolled out for Boulez: 83 now, but still trying hard, and going strong.

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