Was this weekend's Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra program an experimental delight, or an expensive disaster?

If chit-chat during the intermission of Friday's concert at Hilbert Circle Theatre was any indication, some concertgoers stood firmly in both camps.

That would suggest that the ISO's multimedia program, which explored the simultaneous and complementary creation of visual and performing arts, was bold and provocative enough to get people excited. All artists should be so lucky.

Love it or hate it, this Halloween-themed ISO Classical Series program -- which matches up visual artists Michael D. Arthur and Andre Miripolsky with several musical works that tell stories -- was one of the ISO's most unusual programs in a long time. I found most but not all of it delightful.

Arthur, a pen-and-ink artist, and Miripolsky, a Los Angeles-based pop artist, both imbued their works with a sense of grand theatricality. Both created pieces on the spot.

Arthur began to strains of French romantic composer Camille Saint-Saens' "Danse Macabre," and created a fun sketch of the orchestra. It focused on conductor Ludovic Morlot and a few string players. At first, the piece was projected on a screen above the orchestra, but eventually the projector went dark. As a result, the creation didn't distract from the music, and left a little something to the imagination.

The audience was not so fortunate during Austrian composer HK Gruber's "Frankenstein!!," a noisy suite incorporating toy instruments and shades of Kurt Weill, all accompanied by texts and songs performed by the composer.

These texts struck up such ghoulish characters as Dracula, and Hollywood types like such as Goldfinger. Arthur immortalized them all in a busy cartoon collage. Unfortunately, Gruber's heavy accent and tendency to boom or whisper, sometimes in the voices of various characters, made much of the text unintelligible. Following the printed program helped, but only a little.

Working on a 7-by-24-foot canvas after intermission on the terrace above the stage, Miripolsky framed up an utterly delightful piece to another suite, this time Maurice Ravel's cq "Ma Mere L'Oye," or "Mother Goose." He dashed off a playful tableau depicting six geese that turned out to be ballerinas on point -- appropriate, considering that the colorfully orchestrated suite is a ballet.

Because Friday's attendance was sparse, maybe the ISO Classical Series can't push the envelope this way on a regular basis. But certainly this was a program to remember.

Call Star reporter Whitney Smith at (317) 444-6226, or by e-mail at whitney.smith@indystar.com.