Dresher in Berkeley
Paul Dresher’s new commissioned piece for the Berkeley Symphony, which premieres Oct. 4 at Zellerbach Hall on a season-opening bill with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 and Ives’ “The Unanswered Question,” was originally titled “Concerto for Invented Instruments and Orchestra.” Now it’s “Concerto for Quadrachord and Orchestra.” The unbounded Bay Area composer, performer and instrument maker decided to forgo the Hurdy Grande — his version of the hand-cranked hurdy-gurdy — and focus on the 15-foot, four-string instrument that can be bowed, plucked and banged with equally fruitful results.
“I know a lot more about the quadrachord, and I felt it was more richly flexible in terms of working with the orchestra,” said Dresher, 61, who was putting finishing touches on the brass parts of his new 27-minute work before the first rehearsal last week.
The three-part work, which contrasts and merges the sounds produced by the untempered tuning of the quadrachord and the orchestra’s conventional Western tuning, features the composer, a fluid improviser, stretching out in the final section.
“For the whole last movement, I’m hammering on this sucker with marimba mallets,” Dresher said of his beloved quadrachord, which he describes as a mix of harp and electric guitar. It took him several months to find the best way of writing orchestral parts in the quadrachord’s tuning, “to find a way for the orchestra to play what I play naturally. Each of our sound worlds is rich. I felt we could find some common ground and create new sound worlds.”
In the slow second movement, “Tale of Two Tunings,” Dresher plays a 14-bar melody that’s looped electronically and developed by the orchestra. “It starts in equal temperament, moves way into outer space, then comes back. At the end of the movement, I put the two tunings flat up against each other, and there’s some wonderfully out-of-tune beating,” adds the composer, who mentions Balinese music. The last section “jettisons all that concern about tuning, and we just slam it! It’s a very high-energy mode.”
Info at www.berkeleysymphony.org.