Spices, Perfumes, Toxins!

Avner Dorman

General Info

Year: 2006
Duration: c. 27:00
Difficulty: (see Ratings for explanation)
Publisher: Schirmer
Cost: Score and Parts - Rental   |   Score Only - $0.00

Movements

I. Spices
II. Perfumes
III. Toxins!

Instrumentation

Player I:
Player II:

Orchestra

Program Notes

The title Spices, Perfumes, Toxins! refers to three substances that are extremely appealing, yet filled with danger. Spices delight the palate, but can cause illness; perfumes seduce, but can also betray; toxins bring ecstasy, but are deadly. The concerto combines Middle-Eastern drums, orchestral percussion, and rock drums with orchestral forces – a unique sound both enticing and dangerous.

Spices, Perfumes, Toxins! is a result of years of collaboration with PercaDu. While we were still students at the Rubin Academy of Music in Tel-Aviv, Tomer and Adi asked me to write a piece for them. All three of us aimed at a piece that would be markedly Israeli and would reflect young Israeli culture. The process of composing the piece involved working closely with PercaDu on my ideas and testing them on the instruments long before the piece was done. In hindsight, I believe that the most important choice in making the piece sound Israeli was the use of four Darbukas and Tom-Toms in addition to the Marimbas. The piece, Udacrep Akubrad (PercaDu Darbuka spelled backwards) became one of PercaDu’s signature pieces and my most performed composition and is the basis for the first movement of the concerto.

Spices – the first movement draws its inspiration from the music of our region (extending its boundaries to the east as far as the Indian sub-continent). The piece is largely based on Middle-Eastern and Indian scales and uses the Indian system of Talas for rhythmic organization. I use these elements within a large-scale dramatic form and employ repetitive minimalism as it appears in the music traditions of the East and in the works of Western minimalists of the past forty years. Approximately at the movement’s golden section there is a cadenza that precurses the last movement of the concerto.

In Perfumes, the sonic world changes as one of the percussionists leaves the marimba and plays on a vibraphone. In Perfumes I use what I call multicultural polyphony. The opening theme of the movement (in the marimba) is reminiscent of Baroque arias. The three flutes that accompany the melody (regular, alto, and bass) echo the ornamental nature of the melody and transform it into lines characteristic of Middle-Eastern folk music. At the same time, the bass line borrows its sound from the world of Jazz. Each part of the texture contributes the “soul” of its genre, so to speak, in an effort to create a humanistic whole that express the diversity of our time and culture. As the movement progresses the soloists and orchestra embark on a colorful journey from the seductive to the dangerous.

In Toxins! the soloists use the entire variety of percussion instruments at their disposal. The movement is based on alternation between an aggressive rhythmic pattern (played on drumsets) and passionate outbursts in the orchestra. It swings like a pendulum between extreme joyous ecstasy and obsessive anxiety, pain, and delusions. As the movement develops, the music becomes increasingly fanatical until the final outburst of catharsis and death.

Reviews

Saturday night, a pair of world-class percussionists from the Festival Orchestra, Galen Lemmon and Steve Hearn, soloed in Spices, Perfumes, Toxins! — Avner Dorman’s beautiful and exhilarating 2006 concerto. With astonishing agility and precision, the soloists dramatically delineated Dorman’s rhythmic and lyrical music. Dorman’s work, following the traditional concerto’s fast-slow-fast form, sings with seductive grace between the two infectiously rapid-pulsed segments. This composer made full use of the two soloists — ingeniously intertwining and overlapping their parts to augment the capabilities of their array of pitched and non-pitched instruments.

– Phyllis Rosenblum, Santa Cruz Sentinel, August 13, 2009

The finale of Avner Dorman’s Spices, Perfumes, Toxins! emerged as the festival’s great applause machine, as the two superb percussionists Steve Hearn and Galen Lemmon pounded on their huge arsenal and the orchestra struggled to match their virtuosity. The best part of this multicultural mash-up is the evocative middle movement, where a jazz-influenced bass line complements a sinuous flute trio, while the percussionists burble along in imitation of Bachian counterpoint.

– Allan Ulrich , Financial Times, August 11, 2009

On that program, the standout work was Avner Dorman’s double-percussion concerto, Spices, Perfumes, Toxins, a staggering tour de force for (mostly) marimbas and drums that orchestra members Steve Hearn and Galen Lemmon nailed.

– Scott MacClelland, Santa Cruz Weekly, August 11, 2009

Even in symphonic works with significant percussion parts, the performers are usually heard but not seen, hidden behind throngs of string players. But for one work at Avery Fisher Hall on Wednesday evening, an array of percussion instruments — including marimbas, vibraphone, Turkish hand drums and Arabic tambourine — were lined up in front of the New York Philharmonic.

Zubin Mehta, who was the orchestra’s music director from 1978 to 1991, was presenting the American premiere of “Spices, Perfumes, Toxins!,” a concerto by the Israeli composer Avner Dorman, as part of the Hear & Now series hosted by the composer Steven Stucky. The soloists were the two musicians — Tomer Yariv and Adi Morag, collectively known as PercaDu, a percussion and marimba duo — who had inspired Mr. Dorman’s concerto and given its premiere in 2006 in Tel Aviv, with Mr. Mehta leading the Israel Philharmonic.

As with many young composers, Mr. Dorman’s influences span many genres. They include the jazz guitarist John McLaughlin, Ravi Shankar, Art Tatum, Bartok, Bach, Middle Eastern traditions and John Corigliano (Mr. Dorman’s former teacher at the Juilliard School). The title “Spices, Perfumes, Toxins!” refers to “three substances that are extremely appealing yet filled with danger,” Mr. Dorman wrote in the program notes.

There was a sense of living on the edge in the outer movements of the concerto, played with impressive energy by the virtuosic PercaDu musicians.

The first movement, “Spices,” is based on Middle Eastern and Indian scales that are played on two marimbas, interwoven with excerpts of boisterous rock drumming and jazzy interludes. “Perfumes,” the sensual second movement, opened with an evocative theme on the marimba, first accompanied by three flutes and reminiscent of the slow movement of Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez.” In the rhythmically exuberant finale, “Toxins,” PercaDu’s drumming alternated with colorful orchestral outbursts. An enigmatic interlude with piano and marimba both played in the upper register preceded the jazz-hued conclusion. At times the entire orchestra played second fiddle, overshadowed by the fiery percussion.

The performance was rewarded with a boisterous ovation. As a pre-intermission encore, PercaDu performed an elegant transcription for two marimbas of the Prelude from Bach’s English Suite No. 2 in A minor.

The concert concluded with Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, an apt pairing with Mr. Dorman’s music. Composed in 1943, two years before Bartok’s death, it blends percussive elements, folk-inspired melodies and a brass chorale, and parodies a melody from Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony. Mr. Mehta conducted a vigorous, polished reading.

– Vivien Schweitzer, New York Times, March 19, 2009

Recent Performances

August 1, 2007, Verbier Festival Orchestra, Zubin Mehta, PercaDu
July 18-19, 2007, Thailand Philharmonic, Gudni Emilsson, PercaDu
March 18-21, 2009, New York Philharmonic, Zubin Mehta, PercaDu
April 23-24, 2009, Belgrade Philharmonic, Lior Shambadal, PercaDu
July 12, 15, 2009, Haifa Symphony Orchestra, Noam Shariff/Yoni Farhi, PercaDu
July 28, 2009 Los Angeles Philharmonic, Marin Alsop, PercaDu
August 8-9, 2009, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Marin Alsop, Galen Lemmon and Steve Hearn
February 12-15, 2009, Israel Symphony Orchestra, Theodore Kuchar, PercaDu
October 24, 2009 Anchorage Symphony, Randal Craig Fleischer, PercaDu
January 24-26, 2010 Bavarian State Orchestra, Zubin Mehta, PercaDu
February 6-7, 2010, Extremadura Symphony Orchestra
February 11, 2010, Lamont Symphony Orchestra, Lawrence Golan, Steve Hearn and John Kinzie
February 12-13, 2010, Bogota Philharmonic, Lior Shambadal, PercaDu
June 20-21, 2010, Philharmoniker Hamburg, Pietari Inkinen, Martin Grubinger and Manuel Hofstätter
March 12-13, 2011, Fresno Philharmonic, Theodore Kuchar, PercaDu
June 4-5, 2011, Symphony Silicon Valley, Carolyn Kuan, Galen Lemmon, Steve Hearn

To submit a performance please join the TEK Percussion Database

Works for Percussion by this Composer

Frozen in Time - Multiple Percussion, Orchestra
Spices, Perfumes, Toxins! - Percussion Duo, Orchestra
Udacrep Akubrad (Chamber Version) - Percussion Duo, 2-6 additional Percussion
Udacrep Akubrad (Concerto Version) - Percussion Duo, Orchestra