HK Gruber into the open…; Rough Music* Colin Currie (percussion); BBC Philharmonic/John Storgårds, *Juanjo Mena Colin Currie Records CCR0004 52:42 mins
Since his ‘pan-demonium’ Frankenstein!! (1978), HK Gruber’s style has become more sophisticated yet retains its iconoclastic glee. Suave Viennese waltzes bump into raucous Berlin cabaret, while a lush, post-Bergian romanticism is off-set by its spikily satirical, Stravinskian framing.
- We named Colin Currie one of the best percussionists performing today
Some 27 years separate his two percussion concertos; while they cover very different emotional ground, both grasp the medium’s potential for eclectic extravagance. Gutsily supported by the BBC Philharmonic, Colin Currie proves a brilliant advocate: indeed, into the open… (2009-10) was written for him. Yet, despite John Storgårds’s clear conducting, this more recent work is one of contrasts not quite comfortably reconciled. The title refers to the death part-way through composition of Gruber’s beloved publisher David Drew, which cast an atypically sombre air of loss onto the work. But the ensuing – and affecting – fading sounds and silences are undercut by somewhat baggily constructed multi-instrument displays.
Far more focused is Rough Music (1982-83), once described by Gruber as ‘percussive noise-making in all its extrovert forms’. With textures bursting at the seams, Currie’s performance matches the composer’s charisma.
Steph Power