
On 3 December i explored a performance of Giacinto Scelsi‘s enigmatic late piece Maknongan on electronics. This second performance, which comes from the same concert, uses the kannel – the Estonian folk zither – performed by Anna-Liisa Eller with a mixture of fingers and ebow.
Where the electronics version subsumed Maknongan‘s tilting pitch language within a muffled fug of bass and buzz, on the kannel it speaks with much greater clarity. In the process, Eller’s performance highlights both the intricacy and the restriction of the music’s movement. In the score Scelsi gives indications of timbre – chiaro (clear) and cupo (dark) – which on the kannel speak very strongly, the former having a grinding abrasive violence to it that’s quite breathtaking.

Eller builds on this in the latter stages of the piece, making its subtle but detailed undulations a mesmeric twisting and contorting, displaying signs of wildness before receding into a zen-like dronal buzz.
This performance of Maknongan took place at the Arvo Pärt Centre in September 2020.