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Phillip T Young Recital Hall
December 2, 2016
The urge to make a noise by hitting something — usually with a stick — seems to be as old as mankind. The mental leap from "we've all done that" to the notion that we could all play the percussion is a short one, but about as accurate as the idea that anyone who attended school can teach well.
Percussionists not only have to have a tremendous sense of rhythm, they must also possess considerable digital dexterity: eating with four chopsticks would probably be simpler than playing the marimba with four mallets, yet the percussionist is expected to do that and more.
This was the first fridaymusic (to imitate the School of Music's orthography) that I have attended in several years, but it proved an excellent way of dipping my toe back in that particular water.
The programme opened with guest musician (and returning UVic grad) Aaron Mattock with the third, and last, of Christos Hatzis's Fertility Rites for solo marimba and tape, a work inspired by Inuit throat singing and, according to one commentator, "abstractly sexual in nature".
I confess that the lubricious side of the music escaped me, but it was nevertheless most enjoyable, opening with what were presumably Inuit voices on the tape, sounding somewhat like icebound scat singing, and a genuinely swinging (at least, it swung in Mattock's eminently capable hands) marimba part, before giving way to passages in which the tape seemed to give a distorted echo of Mattock's marimba.
It was great fun and tremendously well-played, but I could not help but wonder: why did three of his four mallets have black heads, but the fourth blue? And was there any significance to the final deep bass note's being struck with a white-headed mallet?
Enquiring minds would like to know.
The current students began with Discussion for Percussion Ensemble, a 1963 work by Dale Rauschenberg and directed by their teacher, UVic Percussion Supremo Bill Linwood. The players were Kyle MacLean, Cashton MacGillivray, Brandon Bronson, Josh Mulingbayan and the dress-code, apparently, flower patterned shirts.
Despite the complete lack of what Percy Grainger called "tuneful percussion" (two players had but a single snare drum each; one a tom-tom and, you guessed, a snare; the fourth, timpani) the piece proved to be endlessly fascinating and of considerable rhythmic interest.
Furthermore, as a discussion, it was exemplary: civilised and never heated.
Christopher Rouse's Ku-Ka-Ilimoku (a name which represents the Hawaiian god of war) is, according to the composer, "best viewed as a savage, propulsive war dance".
Linwood once again directed, this time the players were Kyle MacLean, Cashton MacGillivray, Brandon Bronson and Josh Mulingbayan. This was by way of being a complete contrast to the Rauschenberg, being uproarious, superbly energetic and great fun all round.
Two transcriptions followed, providing what I imagine was, for most of the audience, the only truly familiar music.
Josh Mulingbayan returned to celebrate his birthday with a very well played and surprisingly effective version of the Gigue from Bach's Solo Violin Partita No.2. It sounded, as Bach so often does, almost disturbingly modern, although the instrument's limited tonal palette would, I think, have undermined a performance of the entire partita.
Brandon Bronson gave us Chopin's F minor étude Op.25 No.2. Again it was well played and certainly interesting. If ultimately it was less successful than the Bach, this is no reflection on Bronson's playing.
The contrast between the two works shed, I think, considerable light on their composers and their music. Chopin being a great composer who was utterly wedded to his instrument; Bach, without necessarily intending to, wrote music for the ages.
Tristan Holleufer played the first two of Eric Sammut's Four Rotations, another work for solo marimba; I particularly enjoyed the gamelan-like opening of the bubbling first rite; the second had more harmonic interest, but was still highly rhythmic and clearly technically challenging.
Finally we had music by a big twentieth century name: Iannis Xenakis.
Rebonds "a" pour percussion solo, extremely well played by Hans Verhoeven, was an interesting piece which became more interesting, as well as considerably more complex, as it progressed, despite its scoring for half a dozen drums, which left little, if any, opportunity for tonal variety.
As a way of spending just under an hour on a gloomy, wintry Friday, this would have been hard to beat.
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