DeciBells IANNIS XENAKIS Pléïades

Xenakis’s orchestral works have not entered the repertoire but those for ensemble have often found a niche; not least his percussion music, of which Pléïades is the grandest in conception and most wide-ranging in content. Completed in 1979, it stands at a crucial juncture – when technology enabled the rendering of graphic imagery into musical terms, the ‘arborescences’ principle that saw his instinctively gestural ideas harnessed to developmental processes. Not that the four sections of Pléïades are inherently symphonic; their unfolding is more akin to that of Reich’s Drumming, for all that the coolly incremental changes found in the latter piece are a world away from those visceral contrasts in timbre and texture as pursued by Xenakis.

This new recording by the Basel-based group DeciBells is notable for its having used newly prepared ‘sixxen’, the 19 metal bars of varying frequency, which gives their vital contribution audibly greater richness and subtlety. Add to this the use of skin rather than plastic heads on the drums and the music’s expressive range is opened out accordingly – not least in the final and cumulative section, ‘Mélanges’, where the six-strong ensemble is brought together for an apotheosis that conveys its melding of isolated events into swarms with heady immediacy.

Pléïades has been recorded several times, with that by Red Fish Blue Fish part of a three-disc set that takes in all Xenakis’s acknowledged percussion work. This remains the benchmark account, yet the distinctive approach as favoured by DeciBells makes rewarding listening. (Richard Whitehouse / Gramophone)