PORTLAND, Ore. — Scottish percussion virtuoso Colin Currie, beloved in Portland since his tenure as the Oregon Symphony’s artist-in-residence (2015-18), joined forces with them again under the baton of music director David Danzmayr for the orchestra’s closing presentation of the season June 4-7. The concert centered on film music titan Danny Elfman’s Percussion Concerto, written for Currie in 2021 and premiered the following year with the London Philharmonic.
The opening movement of the Elfman concerto, “Triangle,” began with straightforward tapping on snares and wood blocks; it was moto perpetuo throughout, a difficult task for Currie considering the variety of melodic and battery percussion arrayed before him. Elfman’s talent for composing ominous themes showed in the strings; he has always walked half in the shadows, and this concerto proved no exception.
A percussion lover’s dream, Currie’s primary station was anchored by the marimba, xylophone, wood blocks and slats, concert toms, snare drums, and various other instruments, and to reach the other station he sometimes had to all but run to the far side of Danzmayr to access the vibraphone and glockenspiel located there. The term “triangle” referred not to the instrument but to the three groups of percussionists: the soloist up front and the others at the back right and left stage. In an interview, Currie called it a “game of three soloistic percussionists sending the material all around to this three-sided shape.”
The second movement, titled “D.S.C.H.” after the thematic sequence of notes (in German usage, otherwise D, E-flat, C, B natural) often used by Dmitri Shostakovich, reflects Elfman’s love for the Russian composer. Currie plinked out this theme on the marimba and vibraphone, initiating a sudden call-and-response with piano, and in what felt like a cutting contest between soloist and pianist, the somnolent seriousness gave way to jollity.
Manically, the atmosphere swung from somber to silly, and always Currie danced back and forth between this instrument and that. Although he played many, he somehow welded them into a seamless whole.
Whether he switched from pattering away on wooden slats to virtuosic marimba themes, or from banging out a rock rhythm on toms and snares to eliciting ethereal melodies from the glockenspiel, there was always unity, and the other percussionists were part of the whole. The menacing syncopated chimes thunking away from the back right of the “triangle” and the celesta echoing from the left felt as woven into the texture as all that Currie played.
A plaintive melody emerging as if from nothing in the violins opened the appropriately titled third movement, “Down.” Currie came in on a dissonant vibraphone, the pitches blending, melding one into the other so it felt like hearing the strange tone row underwater, or on acid. The lush strings and muffled gongs laid fertile ground for Currie to go exploring in an environment that proved curiously subtle for this type of work.
Switching to floor toms, he heralded a shift in character, and swooping strings seemed to bend space and time as this movement warped into its finale. Currie pitter-pattered his fingers on an African talking drum and bowed a gizmo that looked like a bed of tuned 16-penny nails arranged in a spiral around a metal handle, to produce an unearthly sound. The mysterious voices from bowed crotales felt almost supersonic, their singing piercing and painful to hear until it finally died away.
The finale, “Syncopate,” started with Currie on a muted vibraphone banging out a classic, angular Elfman theme as bass drum and cymbals exploded at alarming, unpredictable intervals behind. This final movement found Currie tinkling away with wooden sticks on what looked (and sounded) like semi-pitched frying pans. Really, the entire orchestra were percussionists in the thundering fourth movement finale, led by Currie as he hoofed it to and from some instruments that I just couldn’t figure out. Very appropriate coming from Elfman, ever the mysterious and puckish showman whose almost unparalleled penchant for wonder and dark whimsy has ranked him among Hollywood’s most beloved film composers. Currie’s reputation as one of the world’s foremost orchestral percussionists proved well deserved indeed that night.
Before embarking on that Elfman voyage, five percussionists (including Steve Reich specialist Currie) stood on stage for 10 minutes banging on tuned claves for Reich’s Music for Pieces of Wood (1973). The beautiful, metronomic precision, anchored by an unwavering set of quavers, left me in breathless anticipation of what rhythmic pattern might be layered in next. With nothing but relentless wooden hammering as the sound source, subtle dynamic shifts took on an outsized importance, and the wry smiles on the faces of the percussionists belied the fierce concentration required to maintain this tempo. The intensity was like that of a 1980s news broadcast theme (but in a good way), and just as it was about to become too long, it ended.
The second half opened with an anemic turn through The Chairman Dances: Foxtrot for Orchestra from John Adams’ great opera Nixon in China (1985). Everything was there, but as if by rote; the whole felt by no means greater than the sum of its parts.
The concert’s grandiose finale, however, came alive: Respighi’s Pini di Roma (Pines of Rome, 1924). With a glittering opening fanfare, this gleaming wall of sound was an explosive awakening. The low strings, always a strength of this orchestra through the years, were flawless, resonate. Powering through the last movement, redolent with the bearing of witness to unnamed yet momentous happenings, the orchestra provided a susurrating halo for the lush English horn, saying very big, profound things at mezzo-piano.
The extra brass choir powered their instruments, standing above the orchestra like six brazen angels blowing a soul-cleansing blast of sound right through the back of the hall, and any late-week, late-night fog in anyone’s head was surely swept away by this irresistible force.
