ProTostonFera

One percussionist can do just about everything, or almost everything. In this work, written in 2008, Pere Soto explores the possibilities of percussion and takes them to an extremely difficult level with just one instrumentalist.
The percussion soloist, Gratiniano Múrcia, from the Barcelona Symphony and Catalonia National Orchestra, who revised the work at the author’s request, considers it of enormous value for professional percussionists: “It is not an intermediate-level work, even though it may appear so from the instruments used (always membranes and metals, with no laminated surfaces) or its traditional graphic writing. On the contrary, it is a brilliant work that is difficult to perform and includes the best of the author’s jazz-based repertoire. It includes improvised fragments, and takes the interpretative possibilities of the instrumentalist to their limit”.
In the words of the composer himself, he felt compelled to compose this work after listening to a soloist percussion concert and realising the many expressive possibilities of this instrumental family. According to the composer: “The title contains a play on words based on the different interpretations I see in the work: on one side, the particular atmosphere created by percussion, and on the other, the innovative nature of the proposal, that kind of prototype or unusual thing; and thirdly, it contains yet another word play; the typical monotony or repetitive pounding that is usually associated with constant percussion. In this case, I turn it around and convert it into a kind of –Look at all the things that can be done! The skill of a percussionist in creating highly complex rhythms and multirhythms and the search for exotic timbres is a boundless source of inspiration”.

David Puertas