Percussion concertos. God love 'em. As those energetic rhythmicists Olly and Owen of O Duo tell me in today's paper, they hope the concerto that Stephen McNeff has written for them and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, ConcertO Duo (see what he's done there?), will sound like more than an orchestral accompaniment to enthusiastic DIY.
The genre of the percussion concerto – and still more the double percussion concerto – has often been a graveyard of compositional ambition in the past. Evelyn Glennie, and more recently Colin Currie, have been responsible for commissioning scores of concertos in the past couple of decades, with predictably mixed results.
Colin's performance of Simon Holt's A Table of Noises at the Proms was one of the best percussion-fests I've ever heard, a concerto that really did manage to turn the tables on the conventions of the genre, replacing hollow theatrics with real musical intrigue and subtle sonic exploration. Those aren't qualities you associate with some of the dross that Glennie has had to play, like Michael Daugherty's UFO, in which I remember her giving a masterclass in ham acting, as she processed through the audience at the Royal Festival Hall dressed as a lycra-clad alien, playing a waterphone. Bizarre. But we do have Glennie to thank for that genuine classic of the genre, James MacMillan's 1992 Veni, Veni, Emmanuel, whose combination of brilliance, sentiment and sensuousness is still irresistible.
As for double concertos, strangely, the Proms involved Glennie in two-percussionist premieres in consecutive years in 2000 and 2001, pieces by Mark-Anthony Turnage and Poul Ruders that both had their moments, but which haven't made it into the repertory.
So the field is open for O Duo and McNeff to make the double concerto work as a musical and exhibitionistic proposition; the premiere of ConcertO Duo on the 22 October will show us if they've succeeded.
