<<  -- 2 --  Malcolm Miller    WAVES OF INTENSITY

The young composer Lior Navok has a bold imagination, and his new work, ... of weaving the shadowed waves ... for marimba duo and chamber orchestra, commissioned for the PercaDu ensemble in memory of Adele and John Gray by the AICF for this concert, was one of the most attractive new works I have heard recently. The combinations of the two percussionists were full bodied and richly coloured, with a limpid translucence to the sound and, at times, a harp-like effect reflecting the title, waves of intensity sensed in the solos interspersed by orchestral links.

The piece is ingeniously based on a three-note motif exchanged at the start amongst the woodwind and harp over sustained ostinato-like string chords. Over these the marimbas, played expertly by the sibling duo of Yariv and Adi Morag, enter with patterns which rise up and down reaching climaxes in low registers, and resume momentum in the higher range, an effect reminiscent of Ligeti's Etudes for piano. Though impressionistic to the extent of evoking Debussyesque textures, the music nevertheless projects more avant-garde, Boulezian sonorities and cluster dissonances acting as backdrop for surface clarity.

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