Trevor Grahl’s ‘Lightweight’ Is Festive And Full Of Cheerful Wonder ★★★★☆

Also with the listeners who partials (1975) by the French composer Gérard Grisey (1946-1998), and therefore knowing the element of surprise with which the piece ends, confusion sets in on Thursday. When the musicians of the ensemble Asko|Schönberg suddenly start playing with their instruments (not making music, but for example starting to wax their bows), the hall light is dimmed and the only percussionist still visible slowly and menacingly spreads his arms with two cymbals, the sound of there frogs – those percussion instruments that you can play raspy.

Was this part of Grisey’s play? We are at the Cello Biennale in the Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ, and at the same time in a nocturnal forest. It’s the beginning of the double cello concerto lightweight by the Canadian-Dutch composer Trevor Grahl, who let his composition merge with that of Grisey, so that this new work should always be combined with the classic. A win-win situation, because Grisey’s acoustic research still captivates, and the new Grahl deserves many more performances.

Taking that into account: the concert is full of effects, timbre related and theatrical, which are too fun to spoiler. Grahl treats the excellent soloists Lidy Blijdorp and Sebastiaan van Halsema as separate beings, each with their own stories, crazy sounds and manners. Then the players become entwined, Grahl said in an explanation, as characters in the novel The unbearable lightness of existence by Milan Kundera. As weighty as that sounds, the music is often festive and contains the kind of cheerful wonder we know from the work of Grahl’s former teacher Richard Ayres. Conductor Bas Wiegers gives Asko|Schönberg a boost: the ensemble plays with confidence and with audible pleasure.