February 2, 3 and 4, percussion rock star Colin Currie joins the Houston Symphony to perform American composer John Corigliano’s Conjurer for Percussion, Strings (and optional Brass). Who could provide a better introduction to this landmark percussion concerto than the composer himself? He did just that at a lecture at the University of British Columbia that you can watch here:
Those who prefer to read can learn more about this fascinating work below.
In the 1990s, John Corigliano’s star was on the rise. His First Symphony won major awards; the Metropolitan Opera commissioned him to write The Ghosts of Versailles; and he became a faculty member of the Juilliard School. Around this time, the world-renowned percussionist Evelyn Glennie first approached Corigliano with a request for a concerto.
“When asked to compose a percussion concerto, my only reaction was horror,” he later recalled. Because percussionists play dozens of very different instruments, he felt that most percussion concertos sounded like orchestra pieces with an extra-large percussion section, rather than true concertos featuring a soloist with a distinct voice. Glennie was very persistent, however, and by the late 2000s conductor Marin Alsop and the Pittsburg Symphony were also clamoring for a percussion concerto. Hoping to dissuade them once and for all, Corigliano demanded an exorbitant fee for the project. To his dismay, they were able to scrape together the necessary funds from a combination of seven orchestras and foundations.
Corigliano thus had to come up with solutions to his musical problems. To heighten the focus on the soloist, he would restrict the colors of the orchestra by omitting woodwinds, and to provide unity to the sound of many different percussion instruments, he would divide the piece into three movements based on what these instruments are made of: wood, metal and skin. Further honing his ideas, he decided to begin each movement begins with a cadenza, an extended passage without orchestral accompaniment, allowing the soloist to take the lead. “The effect in performance is that the soloist doesn’t so much as introduce material as conjure it, as if by magic,” Corigliano realized after he had completed the score. He thus named his concerto “Conjurer,” suggesting the magical role the soloist plays throughout.
The first movement, “Wood,” features a variable assortment of blocks, claves and other wooden percussion instruments, although the focus is on the marimba and xylophone. Dry, skittering, staccato sounds abound, and when the strings enter, they imitate the sound of the percussion instruments with rhythmic figures and non-traditional techniques. An uneasy stillness reigns near the middle of the movement, after which the skittering gradually returns.
This is suddenly cut off by a series of theatrical crashes from the chimes and a large tam tam, signaling the beginning of the second movement, “Metal,” the emotional core of the work. After a cadenza for the chimes, the strings reenter by imitating their sound before the cellos introduce a lyrical, cathartic melody (somewhat reminiscent of Barber’s Adagio for Strings). The soloist elaborates on this theme with the vibraphone, although the chimes, crotales and glockenspiel also play a role. Near the middle of the movement, a frightening crescendo leads to a dramatic climax. After, the lyrical melody returns played by the vibraphone in a unique way; for this moment, Corigliano invented a new way of playing the vibraphone in which it is simultaneously bowed and struck, creating a sustained melodic line.
The final movement, “Skin,” begins with a cadenza for the talking drum, a West African instrument known for its ability to mimic human speech. This cadenza has some light accompaniment from the strings with high, sustained harmonics and occasional interjections. The cadenza ends when the orchestra introduces a dramatic, accelerating, rising-scale motif punctuated by pregnant pauses. Here, the brass instruments enter for the first time to balance the power of the soloist’s timpani, bass drum, tom toms, congas and kick drum. The calmer central section features bird-like, trilling strings, but the more dramatic music soon returns. In the hair-raising finale, the soloist’s part is completely improvised as the concerto races to its powerful conclusion.
Don’t miss John Corigliano’s Conjurer February 2, 3 and 4. Get tickets and more information at houstonsymphony.org.
