An electronic assault on the senses

Two concerts in the past week showed the two faces of new music: the polite and the deafening. By Annette Morreau

Polite vs raunchy would be a good way of describing the difference between the BBC's contemporary music concert at the ICA last Sunday and the Art Council's Contemporary Music Network offering at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on Wednesday, although both were concerned with new music and electronics. Politeness at least didn't require a health warning; Bang on a Can at QEH, however, might seriously consider a simple notice: "Beware of the noise".

Back at the ICA, an institution once regarded as more likely to upset and offend, the BBC is presenting a St John's Smith Square equivalent in contemporary music, but it's more like a recording session - in Stygian gloom with no programmes provided. At QEH, not only are lavish programme- cum-publicity brochures provided free, but the composer takes the mike and amiably apologises for being there.

The BBC's "Hear and Now" series of three concerts proclaims to be exploring new territories. Surely not that new; composed music for instruments electronically manipulated has been around for some time. But in a programme with distinctly funereal overtones there were some gems. Stephen Montague's Silence: John, Yvar and Tim touchingly evoked the spirits of the lately departed John Cage, Yvar Mikashoff and Tim Souster, by wittily (and brilliantly) writing for prepared piano and prepared string quartet and building on a fleeting quotation from Souster's Hambledon Hill. Jonathan Harvey's Tombeau de Messiaen provided an even richer mix with tape and "live" piano, weaving microtonal differences between the well-tempered keyboard and the non-tempered harmonic series. Adrian Jack's Second String Quartet reveals that he's not strayed far from the charm of the English experimental school: a pleasant, well-written work. The American works, Michael Dougherty's Paul Robeson Told Me and George Crumb's Black Angels could not have been more contrasting. Dougherty cheerfully de-constructs a Russian folk song, entwining the string quartet with Robeson (on tape), while Crumb presents the horrors of violence and death. Few works are more unsettling.

The Smith's performance was powerfully moving but Bang on a Can's horror was on a different scale. There's no denying their stunning technique but, with the exception of works by Louis Andriessen, Martin Bresnick and Michael Gordon, everything else sounded too similar - or, at least, the pounding, deafening, syncopated beat allowed for little discerning of difference.

n Bang on a Can are at the Bath University Hall tonight (01225 463362); Birmingham Adrian Boult Hall tomorrow (0121-605 6666) and Cambridge Corn Exchange on Sunday (01223 357851)