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SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL CONCERT REVIEW
Les Percussions de Strasbourg
Jean-Paul Bernard, Artistic Director
Claude Ferrier
Bernard Lesage
Keiko Nakamura
François Papirer
Olaf Tzschoppe
At times during this electrifying reading of Gèrard Grisey's Le noir
de l'étoile by Les Percussions de Strasbourg, I simply closed my eyes
and succumbed to the meteoric volleys of sound whirling around Alice Tully
Hall. Grisey's hour-long opus is unique, deploying six percussionists, some
sound technicians and a mysterious introductory voice, plus sounds created
by translating frequencies received from two pulsars, thousands of light
years away. (I honestly can't think of another piece of music that even
remotely resembles this.)
For this performance (part of the new Tully Scope Festival), two
musicians were placed onstage, right and left; two on either side on raised
platforms at the midpoint of the hall; and two on platforms at the back, one
in each corner. The audience, in the center, was surrounded. The opening
narration is the taped voice of an astrophysicist, Jean-Pierre Luminet,
whose eerily calm reflections on the nature of pulsars might make him
well-suited to read the spoken introduction in Bartók's Bluebeard's
Castle. As Luminet finished, a low hum permeated the semi-darkness, and
the musicians quietly took their places.
The calm was abruptly shattered by blistering volleys of drumbeats,
racing around the room. Explosive accents combined with woodpecker-like
rapping on pieces of wood. The percussive sounds ricocheted across the
space, creating the illusion of being submerged in an increasingly
thickening electrical storm. At the climax, it felt as if every groan in the
universe had been lured inside, trapped to bombard the ear drums. (Perhaps
surprisingly, the physical noise level was not unbearable.) Along the back
wall of the stage, the subtle LED lighting under the hall's wooden veneer
was also pressed into service, with glowing red masses making slow
horizontal shifts. At the end, one of the onstage musicians slowly walked
forward to the center of the stage, and stuck a small metal disc (somewhere
between a gong and a cymbal), sending it spinning, dispersing its whirring
sound for a few seconds until it stopped-bringing the ritual to an end.
One friend wrote the next day, "I'm ready to hear it again-right now."
Les Percussions gave the premiere in 1991 (Grisey completed it in
1989-1990), and these six players know this score inside and out, evidenced
by the subtle nonverbal cues crisscrossing the hall. That knowledge, coupled
with the sheer caliber of their musicianship, made a thrillingly visceral
experience.
Bruce Hodges