The Karlheinz Company's first concert of the season opened with Jessica Shaw giving us Kikuko Masumoto's Pastorale on her various recorders. Chords rasped from nowhere and melodies transmogrified into howls in a performance as engrossing as it was exciting.
Clad in khaki, Shaw would round off the first half with
Agnes Dorwath's Monologue of a Garden Snail. With back-pack and tinsel decorations, she redefined wacky in a sing-and-shriek through Christian Morgernstern's surrealistic poem.
Michael Norris' Chrysalis had Agnes Harmath's richly toned flute countering the often scattered tape sonorities and Peter Scholes' Wireless was brilliantly delivered by Andrew Uren.
A celebration of the wonders of wireless, Scholes' new version for bass clarinet uncovered didgeridoo-like drones and the allowed columns of minimalist twitterings to expand to the sky.
In an essentially lighthearted work, Uren's artistry gave the piece a new motto: "Turn on, tune in and stay tuned."
How timely to include a tribute to Japanese composer Yoshihira Taira, who died only last month. Mette Leroy and Uwe Grodd were staggering in his Synchronies for two flutes, a lively score in which silken threads of sound are peppered with duel-like toccatas, while the musicians pace and prowl around one another like Sumo wrestlers.
Taira and Dorwath set a theatrical ambience for Eve de Castro-Robinson's Len Songs, a song cycle in which Pierrot Lunaire meets Facade through the Kiwi persona of the artist Len Lye.
Lye is in the score, to the last sinew and syllable, and De Castro-Robinson catches every inflection, from the fanciful to the blokeish, with writing which encompasses the rough-hewn and ultra-delicate.
A trio of piano, clarinet and violin (the estimable Sarah Watkins, Justine Cormack and Andrew Uren) played with the enthusiasm of a speakeasy jazz band intent on converting a chamber music audience.
Soprano Glenese Blake was brave to take on a mezzo part and exuded a marvellous warmth.
While a touch of the blues was a tad stilted and those difficult, hearty recitations a little unconvincing, there were also many moments of pure magic, one being when she ventured into Lye's "valley of pure silver and sand".
