Performer: Ensemble Musikfabrik

Does opera have room for film? And live video? Multiple screens and advertorials? And allusions to onscreen identity and cyber-immortality?

An evening of frivolousness and solemnity.

Under the direction of Heiner Goebbels, Ensemble Musikfabrik’s twenty-two multifaceted percussionist-vocalist-actor musicians executed an industrious performance of Partch’s magnum opus, The Delusion of the Fury.

In the world of concert music, it is a rare privilege to witness the first ever performance of an instrument in Britain, let alone a whole host that have been specifically created for a piece of music. A stage full of weird and wonderful creations took over the Colston Hall for one of the most surreal concerts I have ever attended.

If there were a gold medal for programming at Musikfest Berlin, it would go to last night’s concert with the RIAS Chamber Choir, Ensemble musikFabrik, and a host of other musicians, gathered under the baton of James Wood.

What drew John Cage and Frank Zappa into the same programme was their mutual admiration of Edgard Varèse, at its most striking in their use of percussion. Somehow I feel Cage would have been delighted to be the one out of step with an otherwise perfectly symmetrical programme. Flanking the interval were performances of Varèse’s Ionisation (1929–31).