The first of the BBC’s Total Immersion events this season was devoted to percussion. After a day of workshops, talks and a recital given by the Guildhall Percussion Ensemble, it closed with a concert by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Kent Nagano that was devoted to the UK premiere of one of Wolfgang Rihm’s most important early works, his evening-long poème dansé Tutuguri.
The French designation might conjure up expectations of a compact, elegant dance score along the lines of Debussy’s Jeux or Dukas’s La Péri. But Tutuguri is vast – over two hours of music in this performance – and explosively violent. Completed in 1982, it was the first in a series of Rihm’s works inspired by the writings of Antonin Artaud, in this case a poem evoking the pre-Christian spirit of a religious ceremony the dramatist had witnessed in Mexico in the 1930s.
Rihm recreates that hallucinogenic, primeval quality in his feral score, with its insistent Stravinskyan rhythms and dynamic extremes. A speaker (the fearless Leigh Melrose here) materialises in the third of the work’s four sections, uttering guttural imprecations and beating his chest, and there are seven percussionists on stage, with another four playing giant tam-tams around the auditorium. The final 45 minutes are scored entirely for that percussion, setting up a pounding, unpitched barrage, which is punctuated by shouts from a pre-recorded chorus.
Even if it all sometimes seems just a bit too long-winded and unevenly paced, Tutuguri inhabits a musical world utterly unlike any other in Rihm’s enormous output. Any performance is a daunting undertaking, but the BBCSO always revels in a challenge, while Nagano is at his unflappable best in such unwieldy scores. Love it or hate it, those who were there won’t forget the experience quickly.
Available on BBC iPlayer until 2 March.
