An enormous battery of percussion

An enormous battery of percussion –114 instruments – appears on stage for five magnificent percussion pieces by Maxim Shalygin. This Ukrainian composer from The Hague has become one of the most outstanding composers in the Netherlands. His work can be heard at prominent festivals and has received rave reviews.

As a soloist, the well-known percussionist Konstantyn Napolov combines the world premiere of the brand new solo piece Octopus with the previously written Musique de fer for Thai gongs. In Red Bells of Joan Miró, he is joined by three fellow percussionists. In the Violin Concerto, five percussionists create a hallucinatory rich palette of colours – with a varied array of instruments, including exotic flexatones and Caribbean steel drums. They accompany the lyrical solo part, for which none other than Daniel Rowland comes to The Hague.

About Maxim Shalygin

Maxim Shalygin studied in Kyiv, St. Petersburg, and The Hague, where he lives now. He sees his music as a spiritual quest for something that exists below the surface of the material world: behind the horizon, beyond the boundaries of the visible. Averse to trends, he creates music with an unmistakable signature of his own. His work has been successful at festivals such as Dag in de Branding and November Music. His compositions appear on the much-praised CD label TRPTK.

In his view, a composer can express his most intimate and profound ideas in solo pieces, especially with soloists with whom he has built up a close relationship. He has been working with the percussionist Konstantyn Napolov for a long time. He wrote the solo pieces Musique de fer and Octopus for him, here performed during the Percussion Marathon.