Music

Colin Currie

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow

Michael Tumelty

four stars

IF he hadn’t said it himself, I wouldn’t have believed it. Percussionist Colin Currie, in Glasgow on Friday for a celebrity performance, welcomed the opportunity for a solo recital, appearing to indicate that while there is no shortage of opportunities for concerto engagements, the solo recital is a more rare bird. If that’s the case, I wonder why? Is it logistics and transportation costs of instruments from vibraphones and marimbas to every conceivable size of drum? Or is it that promoters find it easier to market the percussion species if there’s a sexy symphony orchestra attached? I don’t know. I’ll ask Currie when I bump into him again. Certainly, to judge from his biography, there is no shortage of work for the Drum King, and anyone who thinks that percussion alone lacks variety, in its repertoire or its sound world, wasn’t at his blistering and mesmeric performance on Friday.

He erupted onto the stage, launching his programme to explosive effect with Per Norgards’ Fire over Water, a machine gun assault on bongos and other fully-armed percussion weapons, including a single strip of curved metal that had a whiplash impact. That said, the sheer sonic drama of the piece was characterised by a beguiling variety of dynamic levels.

Characterisation of mood and detail was a plank in Currie’s performance. The relative peace of Hosakawa’s Remembrance evoked an altogether different world, as did the wonderful mercurial qualities of both Stockhausen’s Vibra-Elufa and Ralf Wallin’s dazzling miniatures, Realismos magicos. And that was Currie’s playing: magical and dazzling to eye and ear, climaxing in the classic drum battle that is Xenakis’ Rebons B.