THE wild patchwork of Charles Ives’ thunderous Majority showcased soprano Loré Lixenberg’s versatility early on.

Already imposing in billowing black, she added sunglasses to ramp up the volume for John Cage’s Aria – bursting balloons, tuning a radio, eating crisps and alternating between shocking high notes and abrasive nasal tones.

Ives’ dreamy Down East was a lazy lullaby, although in Charlie Rutlage the obvious need to convey the text with clarity produced some friction between articulated consonants and the sultry, easy sound-world.

The second half comprised Cage’s Song Books. If at earlier moments it seemed Lixenberg’s sheer theatricality might outshine pianist Houston’s vocal interjections, this thought vanished before his assuredly stylish performance, equally comfortable with extended vocal techniques and pretending to swim around the room as with Ives’ powerfully virtuosic Three-Page Sonata. This avant-garde circus – featuring an apple, a mask, a saw, hysterical laughter, and more – never sailed too close to either farce or misplaced irony. It was simply beautiful.

Watching someone cook pasta in a concert was a new experience, but in another sense Cage’s aestheticized anarchism does feel a little dated today. In the context of recent consequences of deregulation, a wealthy white man’s cheerful assurance that "the best form of government is no government at all" is quite hard to swallow.

Although Cage apparently visualized Song Books as "a brothel", this spacious, dignified interpretation married the famed irreverence of Cage’s work with the performers’ obvious reverence for it.

Review by Claire McGinn