Meitar Ensemble - Ofer Pelz: Trinité (Live) (2021)

Backward inductions is scored for “augmented piano” (prepared and heavily amplified, with contact mics triggering auxiliary percussion instruments) and performed here by Meitar’s artistic director and pianist Amit Dolberg. The compositional organization of the piece works backwards from an original, multiple layered structure of repetitive gestures. Pelz makes small variations in phrase contours, removing a note in a sequence, repeating a grouping, reversing the direction of one of the component motives. In doing so, he not only creates propulsive dynamism in the subtly varied lines, he places the extended sounds of the prepared piano in slightly different spots in the rhythmic scaffolding. The work achieves a hypnotic balance between mechanistic impulses that are nevertheless animated with life and character.

Repetition with variation is a guiding principle in Pelz’ music, and Chinese Whispers zooms in on this developmental technique. Taking inspiration from the game associated with the title (otherwise known as “telephone” in the United States), we hear similar material morph and transform as it is heard in new iterations. Pelz organizes the piece into several sections, each of which focuses on components of the original “message,” from glitchy textural machines to disembodied sustained material. In this way, he puts his finger on a fascinating feature of communication, our individual capacity to focus on different portions of a whole, and to filter them through our own biases of understanding.