In its Australian debut at Illuminate Adelaide, KLASSIK underground combined German expressionist music with live visuals.

Founded by violist Tahlia Petrosian, the German organisation, according to its website, “fuses classical music with 21st-century urban nightlife” by combining performances of classical music with other art forms such as video installations, dance and poetry.

KLASSIK underground: Transfigured Night at Illuminate Adelaide, 2022. Photo © Jack Fenby

Fittingly for a festival that describes itself as “a celebration of innovation, art, light, music and technology”, in Illuminate Adelaide this took the form of pairing classical chamber works with live visuals to create an immersive experience. The opening concert, Transfigured Night, was a collaboration with Adelaide-based interactive video artist Liam Somerville, who works under the moniker CAPITAL WASTE. Somerville’s previous work is varied and eclectic, but this was his first project working with classical music. Performing alongside Somerville and Petrosian were a stellar collective of Australian chamber musicians – violinists Sophie Rowell and Matthew Tomkins, violist Justin Julian and cellists Simon Cobcroft and Sharon Grigoryan.

The first of their three programs featured music by Schoenberg and Webern. Although Petrosian described the two composers as radical in...