# Great orchestral works with m a s s i v e percussion sections...



## Goddess Yuja Wang (Aug 8, 2017)

I was just listening to *Silvestre Revueltas' La Noche de los Mayas*, which is quite an interesting work, and I loved its very massive percussion section with these nice polyrhythms and colours. Lots of energy to jump around!
I don't know... It must be so much fun to play this piece with such a big kitchen department. It reminded me a little of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, even if the section is not as big.

I hardly know Revueltas' oeuvre... and he's from my own country... <sigh> 
I should listen to more of his music.
The piece is quite nicely played in the video below, in our beautiful Sala Nezahualcóyotl concert hall.

*Can you please list some of your favourite works that also exhibit abnormally large percussion sections? Hot and interesting polyrhythms are a plus!*

Thanks!

Here's the Revueltas>


----------



## Sina (Aug 3, 2012)

This list can help. Part I: 4 is devoted to "Orchestral Music with Significant Percussion Parts".


----------



## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)




----------



## QuietGuy (Mar 1, 2014)

Bernstein loved percussion. The "Masque" section of his Symphony #2 (Age of Anxiety) is scored for piano solo and percussion.


----------



## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

As long as you are listening to Mexican classical, try Revueltas' _Sensemaya_ and Carlos Chavez's _Sinfonia India_


----------



## Tchaikov6 (Mar 30, 2016)

Becca said:


> As long as you are listening to Mexican classical, try Revueltas' _Sensemaya_ and Carlos Chavez's _Sinfonia India_


Yeah, Sensemaya is so cool. My orchestra is playing that, it's very tricky, there's a couple measures that have 5 1/2 beats.


----------



## Alfacharger (Dec 6, 2013)

Alex North's Africa, Symphony for a New Continent, his second symphony composed before his suite for a television documentary on Africa has a great deal of percussion. The first 4 tracks on this video is the symphony, the 6 after are the suite.






From the liner notes.

3 Fl (doubling picc, alto fl, bass fl)
3 Ob (doubling eng horn, baritone oboe or heckelphone)
3 Cl (doubling Eb cl, A cl,bass cl contrabass cl)
3 Bsn (doubling contrabass)
4 Horns
4 Trumpets
4 Trombones
1 Baritone Horn
1 Tuba
1 Harp
Keyboards (piano, celesta, harpsichord, tack piano)
Timpani (10 kettedrums)
Xylophone, glockenspiel, vibraphone, marimba, snare,cymbals, bass drum, tambourine
Gourd, maracas, conga, 6 tunable toms, 2 steel drums, 
Chromatic series of cowbells, crotales, lou-jons, boo-bams, log drums


----------



## techniquest (Aug 3, 2012)

Shchedrin's ballet based on the Carmen suites is full of percussion (scored for percs and strings, so not strictly speaking an orchestral work), and has some surprising and rather humorous sections.


----------



## David Phillips (Jun 26, 2017)

RVW's Eighth Symphony employs all the bells and percussion instruments he could think of for the last movement, and after seeing a performance of 'Turandot' he also added Puccini's temple gongs. They make a lovely racket.


----------



## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

David Phillips said:


> RVW's Eighth Symphony employs all the bells and percussion instruments he could think of for the last movement, and after seeing a performance of 'Turandot' he also added Puccini's temple gongs. They make a lovely racket.


As VW put it: "All the 'phones' and 'spiels' known to the composer". It's a much-under-rated symphony.


----------



## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

Varese - Arcana, Ameriques...


----------



## Goddess Yuja Wang (Aug 8, 2017)

Heck148 said:


> Varese - Arcana, Ameriques...


Wow!
AWESOME pieces! Thank you.

You guys are really turning me into an absolute 21st-century-music lover with all your suggestions in this and my other threads!


----------



## Gaspard de la Nuit (Oct 20, 2014)

Regarding la noche de los mayas, I think the 30-minute version, especially the finale which has the most percussive elements, was written by someone else with a french name. I'm guessing he was to edit Revueltas' work posthumously but he chose to become more of a co-author? But I'm not sure.

The version by Revueltas is actually only 16 minutes long and I don't think it has the finale at all. The unbeatable opening though is exactly the same as far as I remember, however.


----------



## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Gaspard de la Nuit said:


> Regarding la noche de los mayas, I think the 30-minute version, especially the finale which has the most percussive elements, was written by someone else with a french name. I'm guessing he was to edit Revueltas' work posthumously but he chose to become more of a co-author? But I'm not sure.
> 
> The version by Revueltas is actually only 16 minutes long and I don't think it has the finale at all. The unbeatable opening though is exactly the same as far as I remember, however.


From some LA Philharmonic program notes...
_"Although it received some appreciative reviews in Mexico, the film has been generally neglected, if not scorned. Its music, however, has long attracted notice. In 1960 the composer and conductor José Yves Limantour arranged music from the 36 cues of Revueltas' score into a four-movement suite. (Paul Hindemith made a two-movement suite of his own, and the composer and conductor Enrique Diemecke later wrote a percussion cadenza - based on motifs from various Revueltas scores - to fill the indicated moment in the final movement of Limantour's suite.)"_


----------



## Ras (Oct 6, 2017)

There is a percussion concerto by the Scottish composer *James MacMillan *from 1992 which is pretty freaky. I only heard it once at a concert in Copenhagen about a year ago. The title of the concerto is : *"Veni, veni, Emmanuel"* ca. 26 minutes long. It's on youtube.


----------



## R3PL4Y (Jan 21, 2016)

Just about anything for orchestra by Ginastera, for example the piano, cello, and violin concertos, Pampeana 3, Popol Vuh, and pretty much anything else. In addition, his Cantata para America Magica is for Soprano and a large percussion orchestra.


----------



## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

Just about anything from Miloslav Kabelas; try his 8th symphony.


----------



## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Takemitsu - Cassiopeia for percussion solo and orchestra





Partch - Delusion of the Fury


----------



## Azol (Jan 25, 2015)

Hovhaness - Symphony 50 'Mount St.Helens', last movement ('Volcano') has terrifying percussion secion.






Normally I am not a fan of lots of percussion, as it only commands headache and general uneasiness.


----------



## Omicron9 (Oct 13, 2016)

Goddess Yuja Wang said:


> I was just listening to *Silvestre Revueltas' La Noche de los Mayas*, which is quite an interesting work, and I loved its very massive percussion section with these nice polyrhythms and colours. Lots of energy to jump around!
> I don't know... It must be so much fun to play this piece with such a big kitchen department. It reminded me a little of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, even if the section is not as big.
> 
> *I hardly know Revueltas' oeuvre... and he's from my own country... <sigh>
> ...


----------



## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)




----------



## Gaspard de la Nuit (Oct 20, 2014)

R3PL4Y said:


> Just about anything for orchestra by Ginastera, for example the piano, cello, and violin concertos, Pampeana 3, Popol Vuh, and pretty much anything else. In addition, his Cantata para America Magica is for Soprano and a large percussion orchestra.


I second Popol Vuh, which has an incredible (and very active) orchestration regarding percussion.


----------



## mahlernerd (Jan 19, 2020)

Sina said:


> This list can help. Part I: 4 is devoted to "Orchestral Music with Significant Percussion Parts".


https://open.spotify.com/playlist/731MOWQRh5NjVc5qben7uO?si=1l5jNlNIQZWcbBP9fhPqMg

I made a Spotify playlist many months ago for this. Follow this as well as some of my others!


----------



## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Karlheinz Stockhausen - Gruppen

It's a really interesting piece with three separate orchestras and conductors.


----------



## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

As a sometimes percussionist, it is fun to play works that require significant forces. It's almost always somewhat modern - past 1950 or so. And it's a shame so many contemporary composers prevent their music from getting performed simply because they put exorbitant demands on the percussion section. But nothing can compare to a 160 year old symphony, Night in the Tropics, by Louis Moreau Gottschalk, which calls for 120 percussionists. No recording comes close (thankfully). When I conducted it a few years ago I settled for eight players - that was racket enough!


----------



## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

Milhaud wrote a concerto for percussion as did other composers. This recording has percussion and marimba concertos:









William Bolcom's Black Host is on an LP with other percussion-based music. I don't believe it was ever redone on CD or digitally.


----------



## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Jon Leifs - Hekla






http://www.classicalcdreview.com/leifs.htm


> Leifs scored Hekla for orchestra and a huge complement of percussion. Nineteen percussion players are needed. "Percussion" instruments required are "rocks with a musical quality," steel ship's chains, anvils (shades of Rheingold?), sirens, church bells, shotguns and canons. Eggert Palsson, principal timpanist of the Iceland Symphony, describes how they tried to follow the composer's intentions. There was a search for "musical rocks" and they finally found some that seemed to have a pitch, the anvil sound was provided by utilizing large pieces of steel tubing struck with steel hammers, the sound of sirens was made by semi-analogue synthesizers, and as church bells requested by the composer would have weighed half a ton each, plate bells in large sizes were used. As the chains are to play short notes as well as sustained tones a frame was built for the chains to move through. And the composer asked for a "large wooden stump on wooden floor" but as they were recording in an area with a stone floor, they used a big wooden hammer (shades of Mahler 6?) striking it against a large wooden box. Shotguns and cannons are to play fast passages which meant that these sounds would have to be produced digitally. Palsson said that the sheer quantity of sound was so loud that many musicians used earplugs during rehearsals and the recording sessions.


----------



## John Garth (Apr 10, 2020)

mbhaub said:


> As a sometimes percussionist, it is fun to play works that require significant forces. It's almost always somewhat modern - past 1950 or so. And it's a shame so many contemporary composers prevent their music from getting performed simply because they put exorbitant demands on the percussion section. But nothing can compare to a 160 year old symphony, Night in the Tropics, by Louis Moreau Gottschalk, which calls for 120 percussionists. No recording comes close (thankfully). When I conducted it a few years ago I settled for eight players - that was racket enough!


I've recently (re)discovered Gottschalk's music and it's very much under-rated and should not be forgotten. Naxos has a couple of Gottschalk albums including the one titled "A night in the tropics" and it's beautiful, lively, tuneful music. Many years ago some Gottschalk piano music was included on a vinyl LP called "Monster Concert" which is worth seeking out if you enjoy music played on lots of pianos (up to 16 pianists on 10 pianos make quite a sound!).


----------

