Maerzmusik 2017, Berlin

One particularly engaging historical inquiry at Maerzmusik 2017 was the concert titled Re-inventing Smetak, a concert with two documentary interludes on Brazil-based composer and instrument builder Walter Smetak, as well as premieres of commissions of living composers to write for his instruments, most notably Liza Lim's Ronda – The Spinning World, which integrated Smetak's conceptualisation of the world as ‘polarities of energy flowing across and spiraling around axes of evolution and he built his instruments or Plásticas Sonoras (sound sculptures) to express his complex symbology of spiritual relations’. ‘Across and spiraling around axis of evolution’ referred in part to the sprawling percussion-instrument tree in the centre of the stage with branches of tiny percussion objects dangling from its limbs, and a few scattered barrel-like instruments that made ratchet-like noises when they were turned and rotated by the percussionists. Percussion is already so varied nowadays that one isn't easily engaged by undiscovered instruments from the past, yet Lim's piece also included some sensitive, signature string writing and was able to incorporate Smetak's percussion instruments and jangle and rattle and integrate them at significant formal moments – navigating the physical spectacle on stage and navigating a tricky compositional assignment.