Percussion Concerto No. 1, Opus 28 (Concerto of the Mad Queen)

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Composer Name

Zivkovic, Nebojsa Jovan

General Info

Year: 2000
Duration: c.
Difficulty: Advanced
Publisher: Edition Musica Europea
Cost: Score and Parts - $60.00   |   Score Only - $0.00

Instrumentation

Soloist

Mallets: Vibraphone
Drums: Bass Drum with Pedal & 5 Tom-toms & 7 Uchiwa-Daikos
Cymbals: Tam-Tam & Suspended Cymbals & 2 Chinese Opera Gaongs & 2 Chinese Cymbals
Auxiliary Percussion: Low Cowbell & 2 Plastic Blocks & 5 Earth Plates

Program Notes

"Concerto of the Mad Queen" was commissioned by Evelyn Glennie and Northern Sinfonia, an was finished just a few weeks before its premiere with same artists, which took place in Reading, on Feb 17. 2000. Composition, actually a is a concerto for percussion/vibraphone and orchestra and is dedicated to the composers good fiend and colleague Evelyn Glennie.

Selected groups of percussion instruments are treated as y unique sound complex, a "sound castle" surrounded by an orchestra. The Choice of the instruments for the soloist is selected from the so-called "Mad KING set-up"from the composer's similarly titled solo composition, premiered in Stockholm autumn 1998. This set-up is indeed very unique not only because of the choice of some exotic instruments like Japanese uchiwa-daikos, or newly invented "Earth-plates", or Chinese opera gongs, etc... but also because of unique tubes "construction" which also in part gave the Title to the original SOLO-piece (The CASTLE of the Mad King) The only instrument which is added here to this set-up, is vibraphone, with its long "fantasy waltz " middle movement. My intention was to write an expressive and energetic piece in which the soloist treats ALL the percussion instruments selected as if it would be "ONE instrument", like playing an Organ for example. Therefore I used often simultaneously different sounds and combinations, but always trying to make a kind of "mad sound catalogue" in such manner and style that I would call "Royal Fantasies" This concerto, only about 16 minutes in length, therefore could also be seen as a fantasy for percussion and orchestra in one movement. The style of my musical language might be described as a combination of atonal and tonal sound, so that in some way extreme dissonance contrast with warm tonal episodes. Although there are different patch-work-like episodes, which are the pictures of the fantasy and imagination of the "Mad Queen" and are described by the colours of the music painting, the concerto is clearly divided into three larger sections.

Listener will clearly feel the fanfares of the "castle guard" from the beginning, and the Queen who enter the scene with a cymbals and earth plates to interrupt the trumpets with her hysteric solo on the Uchiwa-daikos and earth-plates, accompanied only by the orchestral percussion on a "trash-like" instruments.... After almost a four minutes of wild anger, and repeated "screams" in horns, - she suddenly "enter" the quite and clam chambers of that castle and starts the tender theme on the vibraphone.... For a moment, - she is definitely also in the oriental empire with all exotic sounds and melodies that go freely over an Ostinato in a sting quartet... After a while she is back to the wild driving stretta, with a permanent pulse in a bass-drum. To end the piece with enormously virtuoso and energetic drumming over a long sustained chorale in the Brass instruments. Percussive instrument can develop an enormous energy on stage. That is also the reason why the orchestra from time to time seems to be in the shade of the "queens' part". Owing to the inspirational playing of Evelyn Glennie, (co-commissioner of the piece) , and knowing also from own experience, that too strictly written-down music for percussion can actually hinder the "free floating of strokes", I have left enough space in the Solo-part where the soloist is free to actually improvise.