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SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL CONCERT REVIEW
Xenakis : Pléïades (1979)
Xenakis : Persephassa (1969)
Les Percussions de Strasbourg
Jean-Paul Bernard, Artistic Director
Claude Ferrier
Bernard Lesage
Keiko Nakamura
François Papirer
Olaf Tzschoppe
It's not every day that you encounter a new instrument in the concert hall,
but in their tribute to Iannis Xenakis at the Tully Scope Festival, Les
Percussions de Strasbourg introduced many of us to the "six-xen," used in "Métaux,"
the first section of Pléïades. At first I couldn't quite see what
was making the unusual sound—a metallic hybrid of small cowbells, crossed
with the behemoth you might find in a church bell tower, but the instrument
is laid out like a keyboard, played with sticks. The stage had a front row
of mallet instruments (for "Claviers"), a middle row of six-xen's, and a
back rank of various types of drums (for "Peaux"). The first section,
"Mélanges," uses all of these.
Pléïades is all about rhythm and repetition, and the complex patterns
that result when the same sequence is played at different tempos. Although
listeners will be reminded of both Balinese gamelan and of some of the works
of Steve Reich, the sonorities Xenakis elicits are denser, throbbing with
complexity. The Strasbourg musicians gave the work its premiere, and their
collaborative spirit was as entertaining as the music they produced.
Intricate choreography meant one player would run forward to turn the page
for another, or dart back to pick up a musical line on a completely
different instrument. Yes, there's a recording, but it's an entirely
different experience to watch these virtuosos in person.
For Persephassa, the group returned to the surround-sound layout
used for the previous night's performance of Gérard Grisey's Le noir de
l'étoile. Like Grisey's cosmic masterwork, Xenakis plays with space,
and how the mind perceives sounds traveling around the room and vaulting
across it. From an opening of spare drum strokes, the dialogue escalates
into a shower of bells, chimes, wood blocks, maracas, rattles, slide
whistles, thunder sheets, cymbals and gongs, completely immersing the
audience in walls of sound—yet filled with rich detail, thanks to this
sextet's brilliance. (At one point during the climactic uproar, I had to
cough, yet the normally audible distraction was drowned out entirely.)
One more ironic factoid is worth mentioning: Although Xenakis was also known
for his efforts bringing freedom to Greece, this piece—his first for
percussion—was commissioned by the Shah of Iran.
Bruce Hodges