Foyle Future Firsts is the name of the LPO’s admirable training programme for young musicians about to launch a professional career. Participants are mentored by LPO principals, engage in seminars and workshops, and have the chance to perform with international conductors and soloists.

Last night’s programme put a group of such musicians through a taxing contemporary programme under the direction of Scott Stroman. Mahler’s Lieder eines Fahrenden Gesellen was heard in the Schoenberg chamber arrangement with Owen Gilhooly the fiercely expressive soloist.

Webern’s Passacaglia, a piece that similarly calls for precision of ensemble and subtlety of voicing, stretched these young players, but not as much as Peter Maxwell Davies’ A Mirror of Whitening Light, which takes the instruments to the extremes of pitch and dynamics in the evocation of the brilliant reflected light visible from the composer’s home in Orkney.

Just how difficult it is to make such sonorities cohere was exposed mercilessly in the alienating acoustics of the Purcell Room. It was a bit of an ordeal for players and audience alike.

Nor was there much relief in the final work, Schoenberg’s Erwartung, heard, like the Webern, in an uncredited chamber arrangement. The protagonist of the monodrama gropes her way through a wood at night in search of her lover, finally stumbling against his dead body. It is a tour de force for the instrumentalists as much as the vocalist, since each is treated soloistically.

The soprano Rachel Nicholls steered her way impressively through the fearsome undergrowth of expressionist, angst-laden vocal declamation. But neither she nor the players got any help from the space in which they had to deliver it.

The bright lights and bare wood of the Purcell Room never gave them a chance to evoke the moonlit forest, while any attempts to shade and dovetail phrases were doomed.

A worthy enterprise that served as a reminder of how much we take for granted from our top contemporary music ensembles.