Spirit Voices


Spirit Voices is a concerto for percussion and orchestra in seven movements by the American composer Steven Stucky. The work was jointly commissioned by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and the Aspen Music Festival for percussionist Evelyn Glennie. It was first performed by soloist Evelyn Glennie the Singapore Symphony Orchestra under conductor Lan Shui November 14, 2003.

Composition

Structure

Spirit Voices has a duration of roughly 22 minutes and is composed in seven movements:
  1. Jiu huang ye: Con forza
  2. Bean nighe: Largo notturno
  3. Ellyllon: Vivace
  4. Te Mangoroa: Largo
  5. Coyote: Energico
  6. Tengu: Allegro di molto
  7. Wah'Koh - Tah: Sereno, luminoso

    Style and inspiration

Stucky described the meaning behind the title and the mythological inspiration for Spirit Voices in the score program notes. He wrote:
The seven movements are thus named after various mythological creatures from cultures around the world, including the Jiu huang ye, the Bean nighe, the Ellyllon, Te Mangoroa, the Coyote, the Tengu, and the Wah’Kon-Tah.

Reception

Richard Whitehouse of Gramophone wrote, "Spirit Voices may open with a feisty solo cadenza but thereafter the relationship between percussion and orchestra is of the subtlest, with Stucky’s depiction of deities drawn from Oriental, Celtic and Amerindian cultures merging into a sequence as evocative as it is restrained." Andrew Druckenbrod of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette called the piece "a remarkable percussion concerto" and added, "The powerful work concluded with a profound statement of the Native American Great Spirit treated perhaps the only way possible, with complete silence at the end. The audience, previously abounding with coughing, was rapt and no one uttered a sound for nearly a minute."

Discography

A recording of Spirit Voices, performed by Evelyn Glennie and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra under conductor Lan Shui, was released April 27, 2010 through BIS Records and features Stucky's other orchestral works Pinturas de Tamayo and the Concerto for Orchestra No. 2.