George Crumb: Kronos – Kryptos [w/ score]

George Crumb // Kronos – Kryptos (2018, rev. 2020)
Performed by The New England Conservatory Percussion Group (Eli Geruschat, Ross Jarrell, Danial Kukuk, Michael Rogers, and Jeff Sagurton)

0:00 Front matter
0:08 I: Easter Dawning
6:46 II: A Ghostly Barcarolle
15:44 III: Drummers of the Apocalypse
18:19 IV: Appalachian Echoes

Despite his lifelong love of percussion, it took George Crumb until his final piece to write a proper percussion-ensemble quintet. These four tableaux use a battery of Crumbian staple tricks in a wide variety of movements with no overarching through-line. "Easter Dawning" contrasts bright metallophones with slower sustained rolls, with climactic moments at points of rhythmic unison. "A Ghostly Barcarolle" combines timbres of unusual drums with several kinds of water percussion, with tubular bells hovering over a humming marimba. "Drummers of the Apocalypse" is more about hocketing rhythmic gestures than timbral interest; bass drums of various sizes and manic screaming propel this shortest movement. Finally, "Appalachian Echoes," reworked and included in 2020 as Crumb's tribute to his late daughter Elizabeth Ann, has three percussionists alternating between a setting of the folk song "Poor Wayfaring Stranger" on steel drum and vocalized animal sounds, all on top of a separate cycle of vibraphone and temple bells that fade from and to nothing, implying that these cycles are eternal. For a final piece, I can't think of a better way to go.