Cool Magic Tricks: Beginner Magic Tricks

Beginner Magic Tricks Biogoraphy

The first movement began stunningly with a muted harp sounding like an twanging Asian instrument. Grubinger's entrance was made by quietly tapping stones (nature's tears?) as he walked from the front of the stage, where he had an elaborate percussion setup, to the orchestra's percussion section in the rear. There, the soloist had access to a bank of timpani on which he pounded with mad abandon before quietly (and with a slight smile that I think he was trying to suppress) tapping his stones once more as he returned to the front of the stage.

Tan's orchestral writing is color drenched. One minute, we could be reminded that he's an avant-gardist communing with sound as sound (he recently conducted a concert in China where he introduced new pieces meant to be in dialogue with John Cage). The next minute, he can be a happy Hollywood composer blockbuster-bound (he won an Oscar for his "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" score).

Still, attention focused on Grubinger, who is not just an athletic percussionist (he eschews concert tails for a fitted black T-shirt) but also an acrobatic one. The concerto's cadenzas appeared designed for an octopus, what with Grubinger ever grasping for bowls, blocks, bells, gongs, drums, marimba, vibraphone and rainstick.

In some of Tan's recent orchestral music, he takes a simple melodic motive and doesn't let go of it, drumming it in, so to speak, in every which way and with every kind of instrumental combination imaginable. That describes the final cadenza. But what might have been a cheap trick turned into such an exuberantly elaborate one that I fell for it, and so did the rest of the audience, if the huge applause was anything to go by.

Beginner Magic Tricks

Cool Magic Tricks

Monday 7 January 2013

Beginner Magic Tricks

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