Jonathan Nott's Prom with the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester took four of the most emotive scores in 20th-century music and rendered three anodyne. That Nott was conducting a comparatively unfamiliar orchestra, rather than his own Bamberg Symphony, may have had something to do with it, but even so, it was unusual to find him this passionless.

Ligeti's Atmosphères was the opening work, genuinely unnerving in its evocation of cosmic vastness. Everything that followed, however, seemed affected by its emotional chilliness. Matthias Goerne was the uncommitted soloist in a performance of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder that did fine things with its counterpoint, but which also made the whole thing seem safe and bland. Both Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces and Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra should be full of excitement as they contemplate the groundbreaking possibilities of the new. Here, they were fastidiously played, but there was little sense of danger, revolt or urgency in either.

So it was something of a relief to escape into Diego Masson and the Nash Ensemble's glorious late-night concert celebrating George Crumb's 80th birthday. Crumb's carefully crafted music may be small in scale, but its emotional immediacy and intellectual depth are striking. Night of the Four Moons and Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale) examine humanity's ability to disrupt the music of the spheres and to violate nature respectively. Ancient Voices of Children sends a solo soprano - the extraordinary Claire Booth - on a sad search for humanity's lost innocence. Haunting performances ensured the music got under everyone's skin. Wonderful.