Robert Honstein - Evergreen
Robert Honstein - Evergreen
Evergreen is a beautiful addition to the pitched percussion duo repertoire.
Across the span of thirty minutes, Evergreen personifies the experience of the winter solstice in five movements. Robert Honstein's work for keyboard percussion duo (marimba, vibraphone, and glockenspiel/crotales) implements minimalist tropes common in pitched percussion writing, invoking the sense of lightness succumbing to darkness and vice-versa. Written for and recorded by arx duo, Evergreen matches the emotional aesthetic of the ensemble, which is also enforced by the performance video released by Vic Firth (watch and listen here).
The first movement, "Fading Light", introduces the motor of consistent eighths, heard throughout most of the piece. Opening with the interval of a fifth, the marimba slowly expands and contracts, with the vibraphone eventually layering overtop. While incredibly simplistic, Honstein's writing in this section is idiomatic and effective, blending the mallet instruments into one unison resonance. "Sleeping Land", the second movement, completely counters the sound of the first, while retaining the idea of a compound instrument. Slow melodic lines pass seamlessly from vibes to marimba, with sudden sparkles of bowed crotales interrupting. Surprisingly, Honstein calls for the vibraphone motors to be on, a bold, yet smart orchestration choice. arx duo makes the simple sound quite beautiful, and pull a large amount of musicality out of Honstein's music.
"Shortest Day" is the most energetic movement of the piece, and allows Honstein to show off his training in counterpoint and chromatic harmony. Unfortunately, after a while, the movement quickly looses its charm, with the chugging barrage of notes coming across as tedious rather than interesting. The fourth movement, "Longest Night", reminds us of the winter darkness with a rather odd choice of orchestration. Honstein opens with solo glockenspiel, later introducing incredibly high marimba notes, adding a sense of dryness to the sound. The rest of the movement explores a basic tonal chorale beginning in the vibraphone, which becomes increasingly more ornamented and expanded upon in both instruments. Evergreen concludes with the sounds of the rising sun in "Rosy-Fingered Dawn". While the introduction is slightly corny, the remainder of the movement is both musically engaging and extremely demanding of the performers. The movement would be near perfect, except for the addition of the last bar, where Honstein adds a final chord a tritone away from the previous tonic, resulting in a sudden lurch back into banality.
Evergreen engages with both performers throughout the entire work, requiring the duo to act and play as a unit. While simple, the music is by no means easy, and arx duo does a beautiful job bringing Honstein's music to life; one would never guess how difficult it is by just listening. Particular movements are stronger than others, but as a whole, Evergreen is a beautiful addition to the pitched percussion duo repertoire.
You can listen and watch arx duo's performance on YouTube, or on their CD, Ambient Resonances, released by Origin Records.
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