Following a very successful tour with Gothenburg Symphony and Santtu-Matias Rouvali with concerts in Gothenburg, Stockholm, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Cologne and Vienna, this week Martin Grubinger makes his debut with Berliner Philharmoniker under the baton of Zubin Mehta performing Peter Eötövs’ Percussion Concerto Speaking Drums. Concerts take place on 28 February, 1 and 2 March at the Philharmonie in Berlin.

Composed by Peter Eötvös for multi-percussionist Martin Grubinger, the dedicatee has already performed Speaking Drums at top venues worldwide. The concerto asks the soloist not only to perform a virtuoso percussion part, but also requires him to speak, mutter, exclaim syllables of an artificial language invented by the composer. In the style of traditional Indian percussion or jazz where musicians accompany their playing with ​“sprechgesang”, Eötvös’ concerto starts off with the percussionist speaking rhythmically and repeating the same words in different tunes, thus ​“teaching” his instruments to speak until the drums start to talk themselves.