Music Review | Composer Portrait: George Crumb: All The Percussion That’s Fit To Pound

The ensemble So Percussion is gradually making its way through the ranks of composers most revered by percussionists. The group has devoted multiple concerts to the music of Steve Reich; it has also paid due attention to John Cage, seen by many as the father of modern percussion music. On Friday night at Miller Theater, in a Composer Portrait concert, So Percussion played works by George Crumb, completing a sort of holy trinity of percussion composers that Jason Treuting, a member of the ensemble, cited during an onstage conversation with Mr. Crumb.

George Crumb spoke about his music at Friday’s concert.

Mr. Treuting was clearly awestruck, tendering his questions with a fan’s nervousness. But Mr. Crumb, asked if he had been influenced by the percussion music of Cage and Mr. Reich, instead named Bartok, Debussy and Mahler. Hearing Mahler in the three pieces So Percussion presented was something of a stretch, but connections to the other two were clear.

“An Idyll for the Misbegotten” (1986) conjures the lonely solo flute of Debussy’s “Syrinx” and plants it among three rumbling drummers. On a stage illuminated only by the dim blue light of lamps on music stands, the superb flutist Erin Lesser played lines that fluttered, dipped and soared over a bass drum that rolled like distant thunder. When two other percussionists added call-and-response figures from either side of the stage, it was as if storm clouds had suddenly burst open wide.

“Music for a Summer Evening (Makrokosmos III),” composed in 1974, uses the instrumentation of Bartok’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. The pianists Stephen Buck and Cory Smythe manipulated the strings inside their instruments as frequently as they played on the keyboards, while two percussionists negotiated dozens of noise-making implements, including slide whistles and rocks.

During the second section, “Wanderer-Fantasy,” all four players concentrated their efforts on the pianos; in the fourth, “Myth,” all were effectively percussionists. Each movement is filled with beguiling sounds; in terms of original timbres there may be no more innovative composer than Mr. Crumb. Still, there is more to this work than special effects: it has a satisfying dramatic arc, opening with elemental mystery and culminating in a fantasia based on a Bach fugue.

Between those two pieces was “Unto the Hills,” a set of folk-song arrangements Mr. Crumb created in 2001. Daisy Press, a soprano, sang with a winning subtlety and understatement, accompanied by rustling shakers, a wind machine and a piano strummed like an autoharp. Like Messiaen with his bird calls, Mr. Crumb does not merely evoke Appalachia but also seems intent on recreating almost literally each chirping cricket and creaking windowpane.

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