The Dervish and the Devil

For two players of recorder and cajon / For Solo Recorder and Percussion

Playing time: 5:00

The Dervish and the Devil is a fast-paced concert piece and unlike anything I've composed so far. Tom Beets and Joris van Goethem from the Flanders Recorder Quartet commissioned the piece for their new duo project FR2. I wanted to write something that expresses an irrepressible energy, as we know it from the dervish dance: a breathless insisting, a demonic threatening, an animalistic pounding, an intoxicating debauchery, an energy that drops all thoughts and considerations and surrenders entirely to the moment.  
Due to the constant shortening of the meter from 4/4 to 6/8, 5/8 up to 2/4, the piece races towards its climax in a constant compression. You could call it “Arabic bebop”! Passages in which a solo recorder is accompanied by a cajon alternate with passages in which both play the recorder and stamp their feet.  

I would like to thank Tom Beets and Joris Van Goethem for the wonderful recording they made of this piece with the help of Ulrich Lorscheider and which can be heard on their CD FLANDERS RECORDER DUO.  

For the Hamburg DUOSchlagWind - consisting of my longtime musical companion Ebba-Maria Künning-Zeijl and Frank Hiesler - I wrote a second version of the piece for solo recorder and percussion. The structure is a bit simpler, but musically it is just as wild! The part is written out here for alto recorder, but with the alto fingering it can also be played on a tenor or soprano recorder.

This edition combines both versions: a) For two recorder players and b) for a recorder player and a percussionist. For both versions there are two parts.

In an interview with the WINDKANAL Tom Beets said:
"I think for conservatory recorder students, this will be the new norm, a piece that everybody will need to have played, a really good competition piece, so it will certainly not get lost in history!"

number of pages: 
16
Price: 
19,90 Euro