Works for percussion are a visual pleasure alone. What is otherwise in the background is set up on the stage ramp and made to sound performatively with great effects. The effect is even greater at the concert with the percussionist Vivi Vassileva and the Munich Symphony Orchestra in the Prinzregententheater: the “Recycling Concerto” by the Munich-trained composer Gregor A. Mayrhofer will be performed, who will also conduct the evening.
The marimba and vibraphone are joined by keyboards made of tuned glass bottles, plastic containers, flower pots and the like. And if the traditional instruments are played, this is not only done in a virtuoso manner with four mallets, but corks and screw caps tumble over the sound bars. Vassileva dashes from station to station, enjoying her musical circuit training with a sunny smile.
What is being celebrated here together with the percussive symphony players is not a funny show act (although the performance also worked as such), but is well thought out and connected with a message: it is about the future of the earth. The idea of recycling becomes music. instruments from waste. Advertising jingles of well-known brands, which are integrated into the composition and thus recycled like the instruments. This music makes a statement – and is exciting and beautiful, for example when Vassileva elicits singing tones from two plastic bottles while they are floating.
In his own work, whose individual movements flow into one another, but also in terms of concert drama, Mayrhofer proves to be a master of transition: his composition derives directly from Charles Ive’s “The Unanswered Question”. Mendelssohn’s “Hebrides” overture and Smetana’s “Moldau” stand for the beauty of nature (one also thinks of all the garbage that the Vltava has already washed away) – and in the end the Vltava flows back into the repeated questioning of the “Unanswered Question”. The problem of waste production is unresolved. The applause is frenetic.