Harry Partch's Original Invented Instruments: Barbican, London

IT'S NOT every day – or every decade, come to that – that UK audiences get a chance to witness Harry Partch's bizarre instruments "in the wood", as it were. It's easy to see why: the Barbican stage is a symphony in spruce, wire and glass, being filtered with enormous contraptions resembling medieval torturer's machines, which turn out, when played, to be a musical magician's ingenious cabinets.