Derek Bermel’s Coming Together, a duo for clarinet and cello, appeared at the SXS Chamber Music Festival on 16 August, making its Australian debut with Timo-Veikko Valve and Ashley Smith at Tambourine Mountain in New South Wales.
The 6-minute work was premiered in 1999 and commissioned by Merkin Hall. It is a quintessential Bermel work: humorous, gesture-based and demonstrating a keen ear for invoking the human voice. The short duo consists entirely of glissandi: "I wanted to write a piece without any straight pitches, one which relied solely on gestural development, yet which would still be convincing and emotional”, says Bermel. It was recorded by Bermel and Fred Sherry in 2007.
Bermel achieves this by specifying exactly where each pitch starts and ends and where each glissando occurs in time this careful placement of tonal areas defines the structure and carries the piece forward.
The piece is defined, as so often in Bermel’s works, by its opening gesture: a low moan in the cello. The clarinet's attention is caught by the bold pizzicati, squawking in protest, before the cellist petulantly drops his bow and lets it bounce on the strings. At first distant in pitch and gesture, the two partners slowly converge, moving closer in range and rhythmic intensity, mimicking each other. By the end, their disparate lines have converged to a single point, meeting in rhythmic unison. A husky-voiced clarinet produces a ripping multiphonic; the tryst ends with another col legno battuto from the cello.