Speaking Drums

In November 2014, Radio France inaugurated its new auditorium with a programme giving carte blanche to one of the most eminent composers of our time, Peter Eötvös, who was then celebrating his seventieth birthday. On this occasion, three of his concertos were given their world premiere recordings under his direction with three soloists of the front rank. The violin concerto DoReMi, played here by its dedicatee Midori, is followed by Cello Concerto Grosso, a triangular dialogue between the solo cello, the cello section, and the full orchestra. The spectacular Speaking Drums concludes the programme on a highpoint: the orchestra (around forty musicians) prolongs the performance theatrical as much as musical of the percussionist, who declaims texts by the poets Sándor Weöres (in Hungarian) and Jayadeva (in Sanskrit) and moves from point to point on the platform, thus creating links with various instruments of the orchestra. The stunning Martin Grubinger lends his voice and his percussion playing to this piece, which ends in highly virtuosic polyrhythm.