Recording of August 2024: Danny Elfman: Percussion Concerto, Wunderkammer

Danny Elfman: Percussion Concerto, Wunderkammer

Colin Currie, percussion; Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, JoAnn Falletta, cond.

Sony Classical 906443 (reviewed as 24/96 WAV). 2024. Danny Elfman, prod.; Peter Cobbin, Kirsty Whalley, Dennis Sands, Patricia Sullivan, engs.

Performance ****½

Sonics ****

It’s time to go out on a limb. Are Danny Elfman’s Percussion Concerto and the other works on his new album “great music”? Should this classical music, from the former lead singer and songwriter of new wave band Oingo Boingo—who composed film scores for Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, and Spider-Man, and whose music introduces Desperate Housewives and The Simpsons—be in the same conversation with Albéniz, Scriabin, Ligeti, Glass, Gluck, Brahms, and Beethoven, whose work appears on our other Recording of the Month candidate, Yuja Wang’s Vienna Recital?

All I know for certain is that Elfman’s new Sony Classical recording, with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by JoAnn Falletta, is a helluva wild ride. Sometimes exuberant, sometimes eerie, frequently brash, and overflowing with color and contrast, it’s filled with more frenetic energy than unleashed by all the espressos a Starbucks franchise can prepare in the 62 minutes it takes to listen to the album all the way through. Great music or not, it’s an album you’re going to want to play over and over on your best sound system.

Elfman’s new album is a wild ride, but it’s not a one-trick pony.

Depending upon your criteria for system showoffs, this may not be an ideal candidate to replace the best RCA Living Stereo and Telarc titles of veteran audiophiles’ dreams. The photos in the scanty liner notes reveal more booms and microphone than many of us encounter in our lifetimes. Parts of the stage in Liverpool Philharmonic Hall look like a land mine. I can’t begin to imagine the nightmares that mix engineer Dennis Sands must have experienced before sending the result off to Patricia Sullivan for mastering. Even if they—and recording engineers Peter Cobbin and Kirsty Whalley—didn’t create the most transparent recording on the planet, it’s one with enough spectacular effects, percussive variety, and brilliant, tinkly highs to wow you and your friends for days on end. It’s destined to give your system either a gold medal or a heart attack.

Though the Percussion Concerto is the title track, the album kicks off with Wunderkammer, which Elfman created in three movements for the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain (NYOGB). Inspired by a “wonder room,” which the composer defines as a “a cabinet of curiosities or even a room of mystery and oddities which can be fun, or scary, intriguing or instructive, but never boring,” the piece is, as you’d expect or at least hope, a journey into wonder. It begins joyfully, soaring through the skies over the (possibly synthesized) sounds of a wordless chorus. One universe after another opens before us. There’s a sense of spiraling up, down, and in, of something mysterious and mischievous happening. Zoom! Bang! Bingo! Bullseye! I kept wondering what it would be like to choreograph a dance performance to this music. The first movement ends with the chorus taking us down a strange and mysterious path.

Unexpectedly, Wunderkammer‘s second movement begins in a lovely, quasipastoral manner. Emotionally touching, exploratory in nature, and filled with mystery, it eventually cedes to a final movement that’s given the full-kitchen-sink treatment. Percussion goes wild in what feels like a bizarre, circus-like waltz around a circular stage. Then the theme gets passed around, everyone and everything goes nuts, and we discover ourselves immersed in a huge, wild, certifiably crazy climax.

Elfman’s Percussion Concerto for grown-up orchestra is no less of a wild ride, but it’s considerably more eerie and disturbing. Its music can even feel threatening at times. The first movement, entitled Triangle, rather speaks for itself. After two listen-throughs, during which I sat alternately transfixed and apprehensive, I found myself unable to write a word about it. You can hear the influence of the West African instruments Elfman first encountered during his travels at age 18. You can also hear elements of the metal-based Indonesian gamelan ensembles he played in during his 20s, and the metal and wood percussion instruments he built and played during his early years as a theatrical performer.

The second movement, D.S.C.H., presumably reflects the influence of Shostakovich filtered through Elfman’s maximally different lens. At one point its music brought to mind a very large man outfitted in a duck suit with large webbed feet, waddling around a carnival. I’d love to learn what images pop into your head as you listen. The third movement, Down, conjures a strange, hazy universe with no definite path forward, until 5:45, when an elephant lumbers into the room and hell breaks loose. What transpires after that is anyone’s guess. The final movement, Syncopate, has tremendous forward drive and energy, some wacky harmonies, and a sudden conclusion. What a trip.

The final, one-movement work, Are You Lost?, is a never-performed-before adaptation of a movement Elfman wrote for piano, violin, and vocal trio. Here, it’s performed by the Kantos Chamber Choir and full orchestra. This rather subdued, anything-but-exuberant music may seem anticlimactic in this context, yet isn’t, but it isn’t helped by impossible-to-discern French lyrics for which neither text nor translation appears in the booklet. It’s for the sheer thrill and boundless inventiveness of Wunderkammer and the Percussion Concerto that you’ll hit repeat.—Jason Victor Serinus

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