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Phillip T Young Recital Hall
November 29, 2019
"The thing about playing percussion is that you can create all these emotions that can be sometimes beautiful, sometimes really ugly, or sometimes sweet, sometimes as big as King Kong and so on".
These words of Dame Evelyn Glennie, perhaps the word's best-known percussionist, serve as a welcome rejoinder to those who believe that percussionists spend most of their time hitting things with sticks, merely in order to underline the rhythm of the "real music" taking place in other instruments.
In fact, as any percussionist will tell you, the range of instruments they need to be able to play is the largest of any orchestral player and, while some percussion is undoubtedly tasked simply with making a big noise, other percussive instruments (and let us never forget to include the piano in that group) are capable of so much more — in the right hands.
And it was the upcoming generation of "the right hands" who were on display in Fridaymusic, although the absence of a printed programme means that some of the details I have managed to glean over the past week or so may be slightly inaccurate.
But here goes.
For the opening work, Brandon Bronson and Cash MacGillvray played Steve Reich's Nagoyo Marimbas, a 1990s work in which he revisited his phasing techniques from the late 60s and early 70s. Clearly Reich has an identifiable style, as, despite the lack of programme, I noted that "somebody has been listening to Reich's Music for 18 Musicians". Well, indeed...
"Short and sweet" was my capsule review. Very well played and not a second too long.
If the percussion world has a "greatest hit" (pun really not intended) then Ney Rosauro's Marimba Concerto No.1 is a prime candidate, especially since the early 1990s recording by Evelyn Glennie. Jessie Johnson played the dickens out of the solo part (in which four sticks seems to be de rigeur, a fact which always boggles my mind) and was ably accompanied on the piano by Yousef Shadian.
Over the first movement's motoric accompaniment, full of uneven rhythms at first mostly, from a brief perusal of the score, consisting of groups of bars of 6/8, 5/8, 6/8 and 7/8, although the music eventually settles on 4/4 and then 6/8, Johnson's marimba wove complex arabesques; the slow movement was atmospheric and very appealing; the finale (I believe they omitted one movement) returns to the irresistible but uneven rhythms, in groups of four bars: three of 3/4 followed one of 2/4 (a subdivision of eleven beats also used by the Grateful Dead in the late 1960s, but I digress...).
Throughout this deservedly popular piece both players played with accuracy and verve.
The name of Elliot Carter tends to frighten people off, but Bronson, returning to the stage, had no compunction about telling the audience that he was the next composer. His Improvisations is from Eight Pieces for Four Timpani and showed that a first-rate composer can generate interest from what might at first appear unpromising material. At times extremely loud, at others rather less so, this was short but not especially sweet, which is not to say that it was not enjoyable, for it was.
The composer Marc Mellits seems to have something of a penchant for unusual titles: his Tight Sweater, for example, is divided into three parts: Exposed Zipper, Trans Fatty Acid's Rein and Mechanically Separated Chicken Parts. It also seems to be variously scored for marimba, piano and deep, essentially monophonic instrument — there are versions for at least cello, bass clarinet and, the one we heard, baritone saxophone.
I believe we heard only one of the three parts, but I could not begin to guess which one it might have been. What I can say for sure is that Bronson, Shadian and saxophonist Todd Morgan gave a buoyant performance of which the key word (for me at any rate) was "fun".
Finally a work by a composer with whom I am, at least tangentially, familiar: Toru Takemitsu. Rain Tree is named after a particular type of tree which "seems to make it rain. Whenever it rains at night, throughout the following morning the tree makes drops fall from all its richly growing leaves. While the other trees quickly dry out after the rain, the Rain Tree, because its leaves, no bigger than fingertips grow so closely together, can store up raindrops in its leaves. Truly an ingenious tree!" (the score quoting "Atama no ii Ame no Ki" — The Ingenious Rain Tree — by Kenzaburo Oe).
Scored for two marimbas and vibraphone, each player also has a selection of crotales (small, tuned brass discs) which they must also play, sometimes simultaneously with their other instrument.
The music begins slowly and delicately, becoming increasingly complex before gradually dying away to the point where it is only possible to detect that the music has ended by the fact that the musicians' hands have ceased to move.
Bronson and Morgan were joined on vibraphone by Simeon Westseijn for a delightful performance of an engrossing piece. Perhaps it is just a tad overlong, although I would certainly place the blame at the feet of the composer rather than the performers; I'm guessing he became so enamoured of the sonic possibilities he was revealing that he could not bring himself to stop.
A marvellous way to spend an hour on a dreary Friday lunchtime and a much-needed rebuff to those who still believe percussion is little more than a grown-up version of the child rattling a stick along railings.
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