All credit to Red Fish Blue Fish and their director Steven Schick for their dedication in realising some of the most visceral and exhilarating music yet written for percussion. The eight works cover two decades (1969-89) of Xenakis's 45-year career.
The earliest, Persephassa, takes up the challenge of Varèse and Cage in a sextet whose combining freedom and discipline is only to be expected from one who used mathematical formulae to create music of uninhibited abandon. It is a measure of Xenakis's building on recent tradition that the solo Psappha (1975) draws on the example of Stockhausen's Zyklus in its pursuing of a methodical yet inherently dynamic trajectory, while Pleïades (1978) might be a riposte to Reich's Drumming in its systematic working-through of a formal process denoted by specific percussive 'types' – for all that Xenakis's explosive energy is worlds away from Reich's calm incremental change.
In between comes Dmaathen, its juxtaposing of percussion and oboe in a tense yet lyrical dialogue anticipating the duets of the 1980s.
These comprise two with harpsichord – the bewitching interplay of sonorities in Komboï, and restrained rhythmic overlay of Oophaa – and one with voice in Kassandra, whose plangent declamation is less a prophecy of doom than an abstract evocation of tragedy. The latest works eschew flamboyance, yet the trio Okho is an imaginative stylisation of West African drumming, while the two-part solo Rebonds (played B-A) acutely balances sound and silence so to compel admiration.
These pieces exist in often several recordings, but this Mode set has a completeness and, above all, a conviction as regards performance. Sound is excellent and Schick's superb booklet essay has a depth of insight to mirror that of the playing.
Essential.