HK Gruber has often composed music that is irreverent, provocative or plain eccentric, but his new percussion concerto, entitled into the open … is more serious stuff. Gruber’s friend, mentor and publisher David Drew died during its composition – and that context offered one way of making sense of the series of silences percussionist Colin Currie and the BBC Philharmonic threw out into the auditorium, in the closing minutes of this performance under conductor John Storgårds – as if, Gruber has said, a spirit were going out into open space.
The work starts off tautly, with the soloist’s notes captured and sustained by the orchestra, leaving a kind of aura; unlike Gruber’s previous percussion concerto, this one is dominated by tuned instruments. Yet in the long second episode, in which the soloist swaps marimba and cowbells for timpani and other drums, the lack of melodiousness makes it seem as though the soloist has lost his voice. From then on the work starts to sprawl, despite being yanked back into shape when the climax of each section draws soloist and orchestra together.
Currie has been a champion of Gruber’s first percussion concerto and was a compelling performer here, dashing across the stage between clusters of instruments – including a cajon, a rattly, box-shaped drum that one taps and thumps while sitting on it. Still, so far into the piece, the new instruments felt tangential; perhaps this work would have more focus with half the hardware.
In the brief first half, the orchestra had sounded vigorous and energised in Haydn’s Symphony No 85, La Reine, especially in the buzzing rising scales of the first movement. After the Gruber, and the ensuing, long, stage rearrangement, came Stravinsky’s Petrushka. In this cavernous acoustic, the individual lines emerging from the fairground melee lacked definition, and the episode as a whole perhaps needed more unbroken momentum from Storgårds – but once the hubbub of that first episode had cleared, the work came across with its vibrant, distracting energy intact.
• The Proms continue until 12 September.
