Karlheinz Stockhausen works very hard, and is fastidious in his preparations for performances of his music (he has been known to check every cable connection in person), so it was notable that this performance should start 30 minutes behind schedule. The reason given was difficulties in setting up the sound projection due to the shape of the venue. Stockhausen looked rather perturbed by the experience, but rose to the event.

The concert presented two electronic works – Kontakte and Oktophonie. Kontakte was composed in 1959-60, and was Stockhausen’s second major electronic work (the first being the ground breaking Gesang Der Junglinge). It exists in two versions – one for tape, piano, and percussion – and the version presented here tonight for tape alone.

In his preamble to the work, Stockhausen suggested we listen with our eyes closed so that we could enter an inner world, moving our heads slightly to experience the soundscape. “Become aware of how you will fly with the sound and travel in space with the sounds,” he said.

Kontakte was composed using equipment that is primitive by today’s standards – sine wave and impulse generators; manual tape splicing and overdubbing - but it carries a weight of significance and sonic presence, which few works have equalled since.

The work explores the continuum between pulse and pitch, and pure tones and noise. In the version with instrumentalists, it explores the points of contact between electronic sounds and their instrumental equivalents – metal, wood, and skin sounds.

I have attended two previous performances of this work. Kontakte can vary in impact according to the auditorium and the quality of the sound projection. This occasion fell short for me. Although the work is always fascinating, it did not take off in the way it had when performed by Stockhausen at the Barbican in 2001.

Queen’s Hall is an awkward rectangle with an overhanging balcony. Stockhausen has spent over forty years making the case for new performance spaces for electronic and new music – spaces which dispense with the proscenium arch. Nevertheless, here we were in 2005 in a church hall with stackable chairs, and 400 pints of lager in plastic glasses. A venue more suited to a school disco than a concert by one of the musical giants of the last hundred years.

Similar spatial problems dogged Oktophonie from 1990- 91 – this was composed four 8 loudspeakers arranged in a cube. I hadn’t heard this live before, but the stereo version on Stockhausen Verlag CD 41 is remarkable when listened to on headphones, and I didn’t think the Queen’s Hall performance compared.

Where it did improve was in Stockhausen’s introduction. Oktophonie is the electronic music from Stockhausen’s opera Tuesday from Light. The first half narrates a battle between the armies of Michael and Lucifer – with an aerial bombardment from sound aircraft, some of which are shot down by sound missiles. Although much of this is Stockhausen reworking his wartime experience, I always found the work slightly too programmatic for my taste.

In his introduction to Oktophonie, Stockhausen avoided reference to the opera, and instead concentrated on the bare essentials of the music – how it consists of a melody stretched over 69 minutes; how he was able to compose the inner structures of the electronic sounds. He summed the work up simply as a dialogue between “where we are and the sky”  - I liked the work much better on those terms, and it made a very explicit link to Kontakte.

The applause at the end of the evening was prolonged and passionate. Stockhausen received the applause with evident gratitude and generosity, and a certain wry smile that suggested his pleasure in triumphing over these primitive  working conditions.