September is a month of unusual holidays, including “No Rhyme, No Reason Day,” “Wonderful Weirdos Day,” “Ceiling Fan Day,” and “Punctuation Day” (a personal favourite). To celebrate unusual holidays, this September the Daily Classical Music Post will explore music composed for unusual instruments either in ensembles or featured in a soloist capacity.
Concerto for Bass Drum and Orchestra by Gabriel Prokofiev - Nikolaus Keelaghan
Some instruments spend just about all of their time at the back of the orchestra or band, supplying vitally important support but never shining on their own. Today’s selection features one of those instruments, the bass drum.
The Russian-British composer Gabriel Prokofiev (born 1975) wrote his Concerto for Bass Drum and Orchestra in 2012. He said, “It produces the lowest frequencies of the Orchestra, and is used to create some of the most thunderous climaxes, but it’s never been considered as a ‘solo’ instrument or been given a Concerto. As it’s un-pitched, and on the surface seems quite a limited instrument, that’s not surprising; but back in 2011 I perversely thought it would be interesting to attempt to compose a Concerto for Bass Drum.”
There are four movements in the concerto, each one exploring a different aspect of the bass drum, including rolls, tapping, thimbles, thuds, and different types of sticks. The fourth movement is particularly exciting; as the composer says, “This is a break-neck-speed finale, in which the soloist smacks the hell out of the drum with 2 wooden sticks (slightly reminiscent of Japanese Taiko drumming at times), and the Orchestra play a spiralling Hindemith-esque continuously modulating melody.”
Apparently someone shouted “rubbish” at the end of the second performance of this concerto, but many people have praised the piece and Pwyll ap Siôn has called it “one of the best concertos written this [the 21st] century.”
My classical music post for today is Gabriel Prokofiev’s Concerto for Bass Drum and Orchestra.