Virtuosity and color from a French new-music ensemble

Among the rewards of Friday’s concert in Berkeley’s Hertz Hall by the Ensemble Intercontemporain was the chance to witness a remarkable level of instrumental virtuosity in music that depends so wholly on its interpreters.

The members of this storied Parisian organization, founded in 1976 by Pierre Boulez and now led by the German composer and conductor Matthias Pintscher, made everything they touched seem to sparkle.

At its best, the music on offer was sleek, inventive and often wonderfully expressive; and even the works that fell short benefited from the attentive and committed efforts of the performing artists.

Scored for a large and diverse instrumental ensemble, it’s a dazzling display of textural mastery.

For most of the work’s duration, Furrer conjures up small, sharp-edged bursts of sound — a crisp explosion from a trumpet or a clarinet, say, or a skittering melodic figure from a violin or the electric guitar that intermittently makes its presence felt.

Far less persuasive was “We Met as Sparks,” a quartet for low instruments by Franck Bedrossian that relied heavily on static textures and the sort of nontraditional techniques — blowing into woodwinds, clicking the instruments’ keypads — that were strip-mined of any usefulness decades ago.