Kettles and 40 world premieres in 40 minutes

Yesterday, the BMOL modern-classic-weird-baroque-cool concert-visiting gang (that’s me and three other percussion freaks) defied the Dutch railway system and managed to make our way to The Hague, to visit the Dag in de Branding festival, a one-day festival for contemporary music.

The piece that made me decide to visit The Hague was Alvin Lucier's 'Kettles', for five timpani and two oscillators. Basically, the oscillators generated two pure sinusses that gradually diverge and converge. The interference that is caused by this, is mimicked by the timpani that are all tuned to a different ‘step’ (trap don’t know the English equivalent yet) within a major triad. While one timpani gradually accelarates (from one beat per 12 seconds to one beat per second), the other gradually slows down.

The result was overwhelming: a wall of sound that was so massive and pervasive that there was no room left in my head to think. At some point, the pulses were so slow an weird that it almost felt like time itself being slowed down. The interference played all kind of tricks with our ears, sometimes sounding like a chopper close by, or like a drone in the back of your head, somewhere just below your skin. What a pity that it only lasted 13 minutes, I could have listened to it for hours.

The other works were worthwile too: two compositions by Lois Vierk (Yeah, Yeah, Yeah and Red Shift), one by Claudio Baroni (Incircles II), and a fascinating piece by Yannis Kyriakides, ‘Telegraphic’, where the six percussionists of Slagwerkgroep Den Haag were connected to players of Champ d’Action by means of six morse keys. Whenever the percussionists pressed their key, the sound of the corresponding player was amplified.

After that, we decided to skip the beach and go to a second concert: ‘Principles of Concision’ by Ensemble Klang. What a great decision: Klang asked 40 contemporary composers to write a short (max. 2 minute) musical signature that defined the essence of their work. In the words of one of the members: 'don't blink, or you might miss a piece'!

Composers to investigate: Lois Vierk, Heiner Goebbels, Tom Johnsson.