Spread over 10 days, the St Petersburg 2000 Sound Ways Festival allowed soloists and chamber music ensembles from all over the world, as well as larger choral and orchestral formations, to showcase a large number of contemporary works varying tremendously in compositional scope, style and innovativeness. In this reviewer's opinion DRANG, by British composer John Palmer and its performance by the young St Petersburg accordionist Sergej Tchirkov, was the highlight of the Festival.
In his programme note to DRANG, John Palmer says: "This music is to be played with much Sturm und Drang character; impetuous, yearning, passionate, gestural, directional and always virtuoso-like. For this reason, rubato techniques are essential for the performance of this work and the performer is encouraged to emphasize - and exaggerate - much of the phrasing and articulations according to her/hir virtuosity and interpretation. The production of air sounds from within the instrument should resemble the inhaling and exhaling typical of human breathing. The air sounds should strongly enhance the dramatic character of the music. Therefore, they are no less important than the notes."

DRANG is a supremely virtuoso work, confronting the performer with enormous interpretational, technical and physical hurdles. Its structure arches over more than 10 minutes of intricate, filigrained, very involved figurations interwoven with, and interrupted by, chordal declamations and pillars of silence. Palmer's integration of human breathing into all of this fuses the instrumental with the vocal, the inanimate with the animate, the decorative with the basis of our existence.
Sergej Tchirkov plunged into DRANG, playing the entire work from memory, completely unhindered by any of the aforementioned difficulties. The complex figurations flowed from his fingers as if they were ordinary classical patterns, the physical stamina required for the performance and the emotional intensity Tchirkov brought to, and sustained throughout the work were seemingly without effort, as simple and completely natural as breathing. In Tchirkov passion, intelligence and a finely differentiated aesthetic sense come together in a most promising mixture. This young accordeonist is an ideal interpreter for this difficult but important addition to the music of our century.

Margie-Wu, on Drang at the Sound Ways Festival, St. Petersburg (2000)