Press
…it is a restless yet lucidly textured work with a bracing and astringent harmonic language.
- Anthony Tommasini, New York Times
Indeed, the use of extended playing techniques from all members of the ensemble was a notable feature throughout, giving the piece striking atmospherics and colour. But it maintained a genuine trajectory, too, over it’s span, holding the attention as much by it’s musical content as it’s visual element.
- George Hall, The Guardian
…a program that also included the world premiere of a substantial and impressive new percussion concerto by the L.A. Phil’s principal timpanist, Joseph Pereira.
The orchestral writing is intriguing, especially when a lively brass theme in the beginning becomes fractured into ghostly string echoes. The carefully constructed half-hour work invites a second hearing.
…a spectacular spectrum of color.
The Timpanist may have made everything look easy, but he also made everything sound brilliant.
- Mark Swed, LA Times
This year’s Los Angeles Philharmonic residency at the Barbican will doubtless be remembered for it’s focus on new music and a series of important premieres by John Adams, Unsuk Chin, and Joseph Pereira.
- Tim Ashley, The Guardian
The middle movement, which rose from silence in the deep bass notes of the marimba, cast a spell with its dusky magic.
…made striking use of that most precious musical resource: silence.
- Ivan Hewett, The Telegraph
The Pereira concerto, full of aural strangeness and passing adventure, made joy out of textural contrasts. The composer-soloist switched from drums to marimba to vibraphone with persuasive ease, winning alert support from his fellow LA players.
- Fiona Maddocks, The Guardian
To look backwards is no bad thing. To look sideways is no bad thing either, as Joseph Pereira showed. …setting off a riot of rhythm in the foreground on various tabla, larger drums and marimba, Pereira’s percussion concerto proved a lively addition. The second movement paid further obeisance to Ligeti, with its drones, crescendos and punning name – “Lontanissimo”. But the third, traveling beyond the influences to build up a compelling energy and speed, confirmed Pereira to be more than just a stylish percussionist.
- Igor Toronyi-Lalic, Theartsdesk.com
The last of the Five Pieces, titled “Sotto Voce,” requires the use of two soft bass drum beaters as mallets, creating one of the truest embodiments of sotto voce imaginable.
- James Henry, Kansas City’s Online Journal for the Arts
What resulted was an exciting, and often mind-bending, piece which did exactly as the composer intended – the drums seemed to harmonise with the pitch of the orchestral accompaniment at times, whilst the exact same drums sounded unpitched at other times. Even the marimba, used in the second of the two movements, was treated as an unpitched instrument, its lowest register producing more of a hum than any particular note. This was a fascinating aural scientific experiment; with Pereira’s innate knowledge of the piece and what he wanted to get out of the performance, it was a tremendous success.
- Julia Savage Bachtrack.com
Lastly, the work that left a huge impression on some of the critics.
Joseph Pereira, principal timpanist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic was the featured soloist in European premiere of his Concerto for Percussion and Chamber Orchestra, in three movements… Here is an exemplary work in the exploration of sounds through an orchestral balance between strings and winds against timpani, marimbas and vibraphones! It deals with a captivating sonorous exploration, rigorously inserted into a structure that admits tremolos, sudden quiet and other interpretive shadings through a coherent development of tonal and atonal sections culminating in a coda of fulminating expressiveness.