Rock legends Lee Ranaldo and Mike Patton navigate new territory.

As someone slightly too young to have appreciated Sonic Youth or Faith No More in their heyday, and uninitiatiated into the world of punk noise bands of the 1980s, I was not quite sure what to expect from an evening’s entertainment from rock royalty Lee Ranaldo and Mike Patton.

At this year’s Festival, director Lieven Bertels must be applauded for his boundary-pushing programming. In this case, however, with Ranaldo’s new composition Hurricane Transcriptions and Luciano Berio’s 1965 opera Laborintus II performed by Sydney-based Ensemble Offspring and Song Company, he may have pushed too far. For a concert that was so well executed by its performers, I didn’t find it entirely enjoyable as the works, albeit interesting, seemed largely inaccessible to the average concertgoer.

At 45 minutes long, Hurricane Transcriptions appeared to drown in sense of relentless monotony. With endless string harmonics and erratic pizzicato, the work did at least manage its intention of capturing the intensity and devastation of a violent storm. Various percussion was used to great effect throughout, most notably a giant wobble board beaten with mallets at the hurricane’s violent arrival. Conductor Ronald Peelman also offered up pearls of entertainment, cutting a flamboyantly fluid figure at the...