Percussion Rules with DSO Chamber Series

By Christine Facciolo
For centuries, people all over the world have pounded on percussion instruments to accompany music, dance and ritual. Yet percussion did not emerge as a vital musical entity until 1934 when Edgard Varese’s Ionization, one of the first compositions for percussion ensemble, premiered at Carnegie Hall under the baton of Nicolas Slominsky, to whom it was dedicated. One critic likened the performance to “a sock in the jaw.”

They didn’t play Varese Tuesday night, but the Delaware Symphony Orchestra percussionists William Kerrigan, Thomas Blanchard and William Wozniak did offer a sonically and visually captivating program that offered a fantastic — and flawless — insight into the creativity and versatility of this powerful section of the orchestra. “Percussion Rules,” the third concert in the DSO’s chamber series, presented gems of the repertoire that had a little something for every taste and tilt: classical, avant garde, ragtime as well as a swig of Latin.

The evening kicked off with Trio per uno (1999) by Serbian composer Nebojsa Zivkovic. This 20-minute work opened with a movement the composer aptly describes as a “wild archaic ritual.” This section had the three players gathered around a flat bass drum beating it obsessively with timbale sticks. This nervous pulsing on the bass drum was punctuated with unison thwacks from the pair of bongs and china-gongs allotted each player. Kerrigan, Blanchard and Wozniak offered a visceral and virtuosic performance that tapped an elemental strain of the human psyche.

By contrast, the slow middle movement presented a slow, contemplative melody that served as a respite before the volcanic close: sheer speed and energy replete with guttural, primordial shouts.

Stubernic (2000) by Mark Ford offered the trio another opportunity to showcase its prowess on a single instrument, this time the marimba. The Latin-inspired piece takes its name from Stefan and Mary K. Stuber, the composer’s former classmates who traveled extensively throughout Guatemala and Nicaragua. Moving around the instrument in circular motion — as if playing musical chairs — the three players dazzled the audience with their breakneck speed and tightly controlled ensemble work.

DSO pianist Lura Johnson joined the percussionists in a performance of John Cage’s Amores (1943), a four movement work featuring prepared piano. The composer described the work as “an attempt to express in combination the erotic and the tranquil, two of the permanent emotions of the Indian tradition.”

Prior to the performance, Johnson explained how she’d gone to Home Depot earlier that day to purchase the stipulated in the score, including nine screws, eight bolts, two nuts and three strips of rubber. Depending on what is applied to its strings and where, the piano can produce a limitless variety of pitched and unpitched sounds, becoming a miniature percussion orchestra all by itself

Johnson soloed in the two outer movements and conducted the inner two which were for percussion alone. The first of the two inner movements featured nine tom-toms and a pod rattle which provided contrast with its periodic nervous rustling. The second scored for seven wood blocks was a waltz-like affair.

DSO principal flutist Kimberly Reighley soloed in An Idyll for the Misbegotten (1986) by George Crumb, a past winner of the DSO’s A.I. duPont Composer’s Award. The piece takes the melancholy flute solo of Debussy’s Syrinx and surrounds it with three rumbling drums. The composer felt that the combination of flute and drums best evoked “the voice of nature.” Crumb further stated that his idyll “should be heard from afar, over a lake, on a moonlight evening in August.”

Reighley supplied a superb solo, playing lines that fluttered, dipped and soared over a bass drum that evoked the sound of rolling, distant thunder. A call-and-response from the other two percussionists made it feel as if the impending storm had broken the skies wide open,

Each half of the program closed with a performance of a traditional Guatemalan song, Lain Nebaj and Manzanilla, both of which evoked the warmth of the tropics on this mild spring evening.

With the audience on its feet, the trio offered one last selection. Teaming once again with pianist Lura Johnson, they gave a rollicking rendition of George Hamilton Green’s xylophone rag Log Cabin Blues, with Kerrigan on xylophone and Wozniak on the drum set. Blanchard did the honors as sound effects man.

See www.desymphony.org. 

Piffaro Serves Up a "Delight" for Audiences

By Christine Facciolo
Music about animals took center stage on Sunday when Piffaro brought “A Mummers’ Delight: A Renaissance Menagerie” to The Episcopal Church of Saints Andrew and Matthew in Wilmington.

The Philadelphia-based early music ensemble is in the midst of celebrating its 30th anniversary season, and one of the ways it’s marking that milestone is by welcoming back guest artists from years past.

This concert featured performers Mark Jaster and Sabrina Mandell, artistic directors of Washington, DC’s award-winning Happenstance Theater.

Piffaro deployed its full panoply of instruments while Jaster and Mendell clowned and mimed their way through this rather silly — but highly entertaining — afternoon.

The program featured seven vignettes combining music and action: “The Hunter and the Hunted,” “The Crocodile,” “The Flea and Love,” “A Veritable Menagerie!” “The Bear,” “Winged Creatures,” “The Ape” and “The Horse into Battle.”

Animals and animal sounds were extremely popular in the 16th Century. But animals make for dubious musicians. Only birds can actually sing; the rest make a buzzing, neighing, roaring racket. About the only thing music can do is capture the way the beast sounds or moves — which the members of Piffaro finessed quite nicely.

Lively instrumental work depicted the darting motion of the butterfly in Pallavicino’s Una farfalla as well as the hopping motion of the flea in Bassano’s Note felice.

Descending passages in Vecchi’s Il cocodrillo geme mimicked the slithering movements of the crocodile. Appropriately enough, this set also introduced the flattened s-shaped instrument called the lizard or lyserden, a tenor cornett with a foggy yet pleasing sound.

Similarly, the contrasting tempos of The Apes dance at the Temple characterized the slow, often manic movements of the rustic animal.

Sometimes the effect is downright silly as in Banchieri’s Contrapunto bestiale, in which a dog, a cat, an owl and a cuckoo battled for attention with their various calls. The cuckoo won out, becoming the star of the final selection in A Veritable Menagerie!

It could also be impressive and clever like the realistic imitation of bird sounds in Gombert’s Le chant des oyseaux, one of the pieces that made onomatopoeic compositions popular all across Europe.

Complementing the musical merriment was the kinetic energy and playful interaction of Mandell and Jaster. Mandell served as the maestro introducing each segment with a passage from literature.

Jaster is a master mime, all-around clown and brilliant performer. Playing “the fool” to partner Mandell’s emcee, he entered with a “Do Not Feed” sign draping his derriere. Whether playing a dead goose, a chicken laying an egg, a hopping flea, taking a swipe at Mandell as a hissing cat or a cuckoo clock, he had the audience in stitches. But there was a soft side to him as well as when he portrayed the sad swan that dies singing or the dancing bear, forced to entertain the crowd.

See www.piffaro.org. 

A Musical Trip to Iceland (and More) with Mélomanie

By Christine Facciolo
Just when you thought Icelandic music had nothing to offer beyond singer Bjork and post-rock band Sigur Ros, Mélomanie ups and offers a superb entree to the vibrant and varied musical traditions of this island nation.

Sunday’s concert at The Delaware Contemporary (formerly The Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts) featured internationally known Icelandic violinist Eva Ingolf on electric violin as well as two World Premieres by composer Mark Hagerty: Raven Thoughts (Hrafna Hugsanir) and Icelandic Songs, Sacred & Secular (Islensk log, helg og veraldlega).

The concert kicked off with two rare gems by Scandinavian Baroque composers Johan Helmich Roman and Johan Aggrell. Roman was the first native Swedish composer of international influence, earning him the titles “the father of Swedish music” or “the Swedish Handel.” He traveled extensively throughout Europe, exposing himself to a variety of musical styles, chiefly from Handel and other contemporary Italian composers. The combination of flutist Kimberly Reighley, cellist Douglas McNames and violinist Christof Richter brought out the Neapolitan influence of Roman’s Trio in G minor with its restless harmonies and continually shifting melodic gestures.

Mélomanie performs with guest artist Eva Ingolf (far right). Photo by Tim Bayard.

Although less celebrated than Roman, Aggrell produced formally sophisticated music in a pleasing galant style. Reighley and Richter engaged in a spirited and expressive dialogue of his Sonata I in G major.

Ingolf offered a performance of her own composition, Lava Flow, a sonic description of the 2011 eruption of Grimsvotn, Iceland’s most active volcano. Searing high notes and a violently cascading melodic line call to mind the magnitude of the event which was the largest in Iceland in 50 years.

That performance warmed her up for the World Premiere of Mark Hagerty’s Raven Thoughts (Hrafna Hugsanir), a four-movement work for solo violin. The raven (or hrafn) is an important bird in Icelandic folklore. It is said that the Norse god Odin had two ravens that counseled him.

It is the intelligence and communication skills of these big black birds that inspired Hagerty to compose Raven Thoughts, which posits ideas — rather than any specific representation — about ravens. Ingolf’s playing is sublime and her articulation and tone impeccable as she moved through the urgency of “Danger,” the intense tragedy of “Loss,” the loopiness of “Flight” and the accomplishment of “Survival.”

Members of Mélomanie joined Ingolf in a performance of the program’s second World Premiere, Icelandic songs, sacred & secular (Islensk log heig og veraldlega) again by Mark Hagerty. It was Ingolf, whom the group met when they visited Rio in 2014, who introduced Hagerty to these traditional Icelandic songs that range in character from the robust to the elegant and hauntingly beautiful.

Hagerty preserves the character of these folk songs with quintal harmonies while imbuing them with a contemporary texture. The coupling of Ingolf’s electric violin with Donna Fournier’s viola da gamba in the sixth song Raven’s Song (Krummavisur) was stunning. The work was a perfect expression of Mélomanie's mission: the paring of contemporary and early — in this case medieval — music.

The only departure from the program’s Nordic theme was Partita 622, composed for Mélomanie (and included on its CD Excursions) by Mark Rimple. Written in 2008 following the death of his stepmother, the piece centers around the fascination she had with the number 622, which was reflected in the Gregorian and Hebrew calendars the day she died. Rimple structured the work around these three digits: the ritornellos appear six times, always a perfect fourth (2 + 2) higher before the composition ends, while the intervening passages are generated by multiples of and powers of 6 and 2.

Although written at the time of a death, the piece is not a lament but rather the contemplation of a mystery, in this case, the complexities of life. The title “partita” represents the “starting out” on a journey. Melodic themes are frenetically tossed among the instruments in a dissonant soup, until at the apex of tension, the themes are gathered in a slow sarabande-like postlude as the mystery remains.

See www.melomanie.org.