SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Contemporary Percussion: Soloists, Royal College of Music percussionists/David Hockings, Amarylis Fleming Concert Hall, London, 8.5.2009 (J-PJ) 

Varèse: Ionisation 
Mark Ford: Stubernic
Dennis DeSantis: +8
John Serry Jnr: Drum Duet
Eckhard Kopetzki: Kaskada
Ligeti: Sippal, dobbal, nádihegedüvel
Adrian More: Aged
Gottschalk: Souvenirs d’Andalousie
Keiko Abe: Wave
Rodney Rogers: Two Views
Bernstein (arr. Andrew Cottee): West Side Story
Marilyn Rife/Alice Gomez (arr. Oliver Blake): Mbira Song
Kenneth Hesketh (after Aphex Twin): Polygon Window 
 
Mezzo soprano – Martha Jones
Soprano – Sarah Barnes
Saxophone – David Wigram, Rachel Parry-Ridout, Eloise Marson, Paul McEachran, Rachael Moorhead, Dominic Childs
Violin – Willemijn Steenbakkers
Double bass – Ellen Lumbard
Piano – Maria Marchant, Jason Anderson, Robert Eckland 

It is relatively rare to find concerts wholly devoted to percussion music, so this programme of contemporary works and new commissions offered a fantastic insight into the creativity and versatility of this section of the orchestra. 

The concert was played by percussion students from the Royal College of Music, and many of them had arranged pieces for their own instruments. It was introduced and, in parts, conducted by David Hockings, percussion faculty head at the RCM, who is also principal percussionist with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and London Sinfonietta. 

The players kicked off the evening with Varèse’s Ionisation – one of the first purely percussion pieces by a Western composer. The large ensemble of players perfectly realised the composer’s idiosyncratic sound world, evoking the movement of atomic particles and electrical charges. 
Stubernic by Mark Ford offered a superb opportunity for the three marimba players to showcase their skills on a single four-and-a-third octave instrument. Moving around the marimba in circular movements, the three players dazzled the audience with their breakneck speed and tightly controlled ensemble work. 

In contrast, Dennis DeSantis’s +8 slightly disappointed. A piece for solo saxophone and drum kit, the piece was meant to mirror techno dance music but sounded more like a halting jazz track, with some very heavy repetition.  

John Serry Jnr’s Drum Duet offered more excitement, with its pulsating Latin rhythms, complex interplay between the drummers, and their exploration of the sound possibilities of different parts of their instruments, which included beating the stand of the snare drum. 

The marimba again came under the spotlight in Eckhard Kopetzki’s Kaskada, an impressionistic portrayal of a waterfall’s progress from its initial source to the final plunging cascades. 

The first half of the concert ended with Ligeti’s song cycle Sippal, dobbal, nádihegedüvel. The seven settings of poems by Sando Weöres paired a mezzo soprano (Martha Jones) with a bewildering array of instruments that included Japanese temple bowls, wind chimes, harmonica, whistles and cow bells. In characteristic Ligeti style, the songs were by turns playful, comic, disturbing, and downright weird. 

Young composer Adrian More provided a new commission for soprano Sarah Barnes with percussion ensemble. A rather disturbing song about the perceptions of being old, Aged drew on the sometimes harsh sonorities of drums and other percussion instruments to expose the frailty and fears experienced by the elderly.  
It was back to the marimba for Gottschalk’s Souvenirs d’Andalousie – a work for piano, but here arranged for two marimbas, each taking the left and right hand parts of the original. Skillfully and virtuosically played, the arrangement allowed for an emerging sense of competitiveness and final co-operation between the players. 
Wave by Japanese composer Keiko Abe was an equally thrilling piece for marimba and drums, punctuated by rhythmic shouting, clapping and stomping by the players. 
Six saxophones and double bass took centre stage for the first part of Rodney Rogers’ Two Views (Complicated Optimism). The reedy lyricism of the saxophone ensemble beautifully contrasted with the abrasive percussion that accompanied them. 

A memorable performance of themes from Bernstein’s West Side Story, arranged by former RCM student Andrew Cottee, for marimba, drums and other instruments followed. The combination seemed entirely appropriate for the Latin-inspired songs of the musical. 

A rather over-extended programme led to a rush to fit in all of the advertised works, but Oliver Blake’s solo performance of his own arrangement of Mbira Song provided a gentle interlude. Originally composed for marimba, Blake adapted the piece for mbira – a traditional Zimbabwean instrument, sometimes called the African thumb piano. The complex finger work involved in the playing of this instrument was projected for all to see onto a large screen.  
With just minutes to spare, a final battery of various percussion instruments joined a solo violin and piano for a headlong rush into Hesketh’s Polygon Window. Rising to a thrilling climax, the piece rounded off a long, but hugely rewarding concert. The student players displayed high levels of skill and musicianship, and left the audience hoping for more of the same in the future.

John-Pierre Joyce

reviewer


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