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Ching, Cling—Clang!

by Paul Bass | Feb 26, 2007 11:03 am

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Posted to: Arts

Percussion—it’s not just banging on drums, as Oslo’s Eirik Raude demonstrated while roaming the Sprague Hall stage for a 30-minute rendition of I Ching.

Click on the play arrows of these video snippets to sample the performance Raude gave Sunday night. He was a featured soloist at a Yale Percussion Group recital that demonstrated the breadth—rhythmic breadth, and tuneful breadth—of the genre. He roamed the stage, playing drums that spanned cultures and centuries.

Raude used to attend Yale School of Music before moving on to become a prominent international soloist based in Norway. He visited New Haven to take the traditional alumnus spot in an annual student showcase. Raude performed I Ching, a piece by Per Nørgård that, like its literary namesake, explores “the relationship between ordered and chaotic forces,” in the words of the program notes. He was introduced as perhaps the only performer alive who has memorized the entire piece.

There was quiet, ordered beauty on a big drum…

 

...loud sounds from small drums…

 

... and reminders that percussion and melody can co-exist.


Poetry added its own rhythm to the mix in the evening’s first set. Four Yale percussionists (James Deitz, Jeff Jones, David Skidmore, and Svet Stoyonov), at times abandoning their drums for whistles or Chromatic harmonicas, backed mezzo-soprano Abigal Nims as she sang György Ligeti’s versions of Hungarian songs based on the poems of Sandor Weores. This snippet is from Szajkó, which means “Parakeet.” Ligeti wrote in the notes: “Even if the text of Szajo does have a meaning, the poem is in effect a nonsensical play on words, but one which produces a rhythmic swing.” Click on the play arrow to see what he means.

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