(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
Canadian producer and drummer Johannes Welsch collected gong improvisations
on Sound Creation (Deep Listening, 2012).
The pieces are performed
on four groups of gongs, each named after one of ancient Greece's four elements (fire, water, earth and air).
The results range from the
"ambient" quiet of Fire to the terrifying holocaust of Storm,
from the metaphysicial suspense of Water (listen carefully to the
undercurrent of reverbs) to the glacial monoliths of Earth.
The Stockhausen-inspired Symphony Part I ups the ante by drawing
a parallel with droning music. Symphony Part II is the most sophisticated
piece here, as the drones constitute a slow-moving organism that is left
to evolve/expand over an infinite acoustic space.
A bit of polyphony enters the picture in the closer
Air when two singing bowls, one of crystal and one of bronze,
interact with a gongs.
Welsch has obviously a super-human ear for the sound of the gong, and
his sound art may help train the ears of many more people, but, as far as
art goes, there is something lacking in the development of these pieces,
and in part it may be due to the composer's desire to "show off" the
capabilities of the instruments. His Symphony is probably just
an appetizer from what could truly be a gong symphony or concerto.
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