Lee Hinkle: Modern American Percussion Concerti
Ravello Records

Modern American Percussion Concerti impresses as both a remarkable musical statement and logistical achievement. On the release, three pieces by three contemporary American composers are performed by three separate ensembles and conductors, the Penn's Woods Festival Orchestra, the University of Maryland Wind Orchestra, and the Penn State University Wind Ensemble conducted by, respectively, Gerardo Edelstein, Michael Votta, and Tonya Mitchell-Spradlin. In a project whose recording spanned seven years, percussionist Lee Hinkle is the common thread connecting Maurice Wright's Concertpiece for Marimba and Orchestra, Steven Stucky's Concerto for Percussion and Wind Orchestra, and Evan Ziporyn's Impulse Control. Hinkle has made a name for himself as the principal percussionist with the 21st Century Consort and by appearing with numerous performers and orchestral ensembles. In being the driving force behind Modern American Percussion Concerti and the featured soloist, his profile should rise even more, and classical percussionists owe him a debt of thanks for doing much to promote the creation of new works for percussion.

Wright's opening Concertpiece for Marimba and Orchestra was written for his longtime friend Will Hudgins, but Hinkle certainly rises to the occasion in his performance with the Penn's Woods Festival Orchestra. Structured in three movements (the outer two based on a twelve-tone set, incidentally), the work provides a terrific forum for Hinkle's marimba-playing prowess. The enticingly woodsy tone of the instrument gives the athletic first movement extra appeal; also commendable is Wright's poised writing, which gives breathing space to both orchestra and soloist and enables each to be heard with clarity. Sober and dignified, the work's central movement replaces the opening's nimble moves with a meditative, delicately textured hush; the aptly titled “Brillante” wends a wide-ranging path, some parts ponderous and mystery-laden, others, including an arresting cadenza, animated.

Gordon Stout, the solo percussionist who participated in the work's 2002 concert premiere, asked Stucky to incorporate a plethora of instruments into his Concerto for Percussion and Wind Orchestra, and the composer obviously obliged. There's marimba, yes, but the five-part work also features steel drums, glockenspiel, xylophone, gongs, Japanese temple bells, almglocken (tuned European cowbells), gogo bells, Latin-American cowbells, brake drums, and even an anvil and automobile suspension spring. Performed by Hinkle with the University of Maryland Wind Orchestra, Stucky's works through an even greater number of contrasts, stylistic and timbral, than Wright's. After a boisterous “Energico” movement packed with wood and drum sounds and brass and woodwind punctuations, the second adopts a contemplative tone for its marimba, steel drum, and orchestral ruminations. Extroverted third and fifth movements, the “Vivace” sprinkled with mallet instruments and the “Gioioso” spiked with metal instrument accents, frame the work's most solemn part, “Grave (To the Victims of September 11, 2001).” Stucky reports that he never intended to compose material about the 9/11 attacks but discovered that it “thrust itself into my music whether I wanted it or not,” hence the dedication that was added after the fourth movement was completed.

In pairing wind ensemble and drum kit, Ziporyn's two-part Impulse Control is as rare a concerto beast as there could conceivably be. Adding to its singular character, it augments Hinkle on the drum set with five additional percussionists who intensify the polyrhythmic storm. In response to the composer's astute observation, “If the drummer rocks, the piece rocks, or, more precisely, if the drummer doesn't, the piece cannot,” Impulse Control definitely rocks. With Hinkle accompanied by the Penn State University Wind Ensemble, the piece moves from a modest four-minute opening movement to a fifteen-minute second of broad scope. Hinkle and his percussion compadres animate the barrelhouse first part with martial-styled moves before the terrain opens up for the adventurous second when the ensemble's other instruments join in. It's clear from the precision with which the drum kit and ensemble synchronize that the composer notated the material for Hinkle's part with as much as care as he did the Wind Ensemble's.

May 2024