The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra graced the Touhill Performing Arts Center with an afternoon performance Sunday, Nov. 23.
The Explosions Percussion Festival program, in its fourth season, featured a variety of styles and instruments from many corners of the world. As one would expect, the professionalism, talent, and skill of the musicians made the performance a rare pleasure to experience.
As much as it was a musical performance, the afternoon also included history and background to the style of music.
Composer Bela Bartok (1881-1945) journeyed through Arabic, Jewish and African cultures studying their unique percussion instruments and styles.
From what he heard and learned, he constructed, in 1937, a sonata that the St. Louis Symphony musicians performed.
The Touhill event also included an assortment of those particular musical styles played on their own after Bartok's sonata.
International pianist Orli Shaham was joined at the performance by Peter Henderson, professor of music at Maryville University, also on piano.
St. Louis Symphony Orchestra's William James is in his first season as principal percussion, and Richard Holmes has been a longtime principal timpani.
What was unique about the Bartok sonata was the non-traditional use of the piano as a strict percussion accompaniment.
At times, Shaham's and Henderson's playing was more akin in method to drumming. The emotion of the piece was a roller coaster of frantic climax and mellow drifting.
The connection of the two extremes is said to parallel Bartok's own experience from which he drew the inspiration for the sonata.
After an ocean voyage in 1913 to Algeria, where he recorded music, he traveled on to the northern edge of the Sahara. There he fell ill and had to return home.
As much as the rhythm spurred feelings of frantic pace, it also was suggestive of a frantic search, perhaps Bartok's own efforts to unite Eastern and Western styles of music.
The second half of the performance featured three pure percussionists who introduced the audience to some of the influences that Bartok would have experienced in his travels.
The musicians themselves would speak casually to the audience between songs, informing them of the history of each piece or the difference in the styles from common Western styles.
N. Scott Robinson, world percussionist, teacher and scholar; David Kukhermann, pioneer in the field of hand and finger drumming, and Haig Manoukian, self-taught master of the oud (an 11-string fretless instrument used throughout the Middle East) added their talent to the concert.
The trio's first performance was an Arabic and Jewish 10-beat song, circa 1100-1400s. They followed that with a North African 2-beat song, and a pure Arabic song in 6/8 time.
Each song presented a unique sound, and it was in stark contrast to the usual tempos of modern percussion.
Manoukian, between songs, explained the Arabic/Turkish "maqam" scale that includes quartertones, intervals not found in western music. This he demonstrated to the audience by playing several scales and pointing out the difference and, of course, he used it throughout most of the songs.
Halfway through their performance, Kukhermann and Robinson made masterful percussion solo performances on the riqq, tar, bendir and frame drums.
The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra continues to be a constant delight and its performances never cease to impress.
Finding a way to include informative explanations and interesting background was an extra touch that gave the audience a sense of having truly experienced something that they will long remember.
Be the first to comment on this article!