As part of a new concert series, the Surround Sound concert will see students of the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) come together in collaboration to perform pivotal works in each repertoire with a big twist and a big sound.
The sonic sensation created when bringing together two very dexterous and different families of instruments is an ambitious feat to say the least – but it’s not one the piano and percussion students at the ANAM are about to shy away from.
According to Timothy Young, head of piano and chamber music at ANAM and a revered pianist in his own right, the piano is at its core a percussion instrument and as such, the art of it is making it sing. “Fundamentally, they pair up pretty well. We’ve divided the program to explore the repertoire of some of the standard works but also some of the most amazing ones, too,” Young says.
The repertoire, works by Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, Steve Reich and Iannis Xenakis, are to some degree obvious choices for percussion instruments, but collaboration from the two families has resulted in unique arrangements of some of these works. Young himself has arranged Stravinsky’s ‘The Rite Of Spring’ for this concert. “He [Stravinsky] did write it originally for four hands, one piano,” explains Young, “but I’ve made this arrangement for four pianos and seven pianists.
“Effectively what happens is in his piano reduction – which is extraordinary in itself – there’s quite a number of orchestral lines that go missing because it’s impossible for 20 fingers to play that many notes.
“But also some of these juxtaposed polyrhythms that make it so incredible are a little lost because in the way of reducing it, it’s just not possible for two people to manage all of it.
So performing such a well-known and ambitious work, as the pianists are performing from the orchestral version with the percussionists, it’ll be great to have an additional depth of sound. “Bass drums, tam-tams, and things that make an enormous amount of sound. A piano as big as it is can’t really achieve that sort of volume,” says Young. Keeping the percussion parts the same as the original score will undoubtedly add interesting textures to this arrangement.
Pedagogically speaking, Stravinsky is essential music – but that’s not to discount any of the other works on this program as lesser either. Xenakis was known as a designer and architect as well as a musician who manipulated music for certain spaces in his lifetime. It’s something Young considered for the space they have performing ‘Persephassa’. “Because it’s surround sound, stations will be placed around the hall, us surrounding the audience,” says Young. “They’ll get this amazing effect of the music travelling around them.
“We’ve even applied the same principle to the Reich Clapping Music – even though it was written to be performed by two people, we’re doing it for 22 people.”
Challenging as these arrangements might seem, Young reassures that the ANAM music students are having a lot of fun in preparing the program. “I think the audience will really get a buzz from it as well!” he says.
This style of collaboration between students of different instruments will be enlightening, to not only learn from one another but to support one another as well. “That’s really the ethos of the whole institution at ANAM, and that is that chamber music forms the entire basis of the pedagogical approach,” says Young. “Truly, it’s through collaboration and working together that you learn what music is really about.”
ANAM’s Surround Sound concert goes down Saturday April 13 at the South Melbourne Town Hall. Tickets start from $25 for under-30’s via ANAM’s website.
