Search - Luciano Berio, Iannis Xenakis, Mauricio Kagel :: The Solitary Trombone

Linberg knocks the hell out of anything he blows into

04/04/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The trombone surprisingly enough, has been one of the premiere solo instruments to have surfaced within the avant-garde's turn in the early Sixties to mutiphonics,extended timbral techniques and just pure virtuosity. We have now an entire cadre of virtuosi. And composers have indeed been very generous in placing an entire literature of strictly solo works before their eyes. The trombone now has an entire repertoire of important masterworks, something it never had in its 500 year existence. The best piece here is the Berio's Sequenza. Although you need to first hear Vinko Globokar, who was the first inspired iconoclast of the trombone before anyone else. The Berio engages the image of an Italian clown Glock, as a metaphor for a comedic high drama. But the music is serious and arresting with snaps of high register toots, fast filigree Rossini like high energy and ugly other-worldly multiphonics. That's where you sing and play simultaneously and the result is an out-of-tune semi-chord that when you hear it,you say "can a trombone really do that". More within traditional parlance is the "Keren" by Xenakis. The word is Hebrew for horn, David's I guess. But here( typically Xenakis) every micropart of the trombone is utilized, screeching up in the stratosphere to glissandi down to the Dante-esque bowels of the earth sonorities. Fast repetitive patterns also appear. I guess Xenakis was bitten by the accessibility bug like everyone else. The other pieces are less compelling and less focused in their use of the trombone as a protagonist. Still Linberg makes good music and can make anything sound compelling."