Steve Reich's latest album, Daniel Variations, comprises both the title piece, written in 2006 in memory of slain reporter Daniel Pearl, and Variations for Vibes, Pianos, and Strings. The New York Times says the title piece "avoids both sentimentality and vituperation," despite its subject matter. It is, instead "a work of contemplative commemoration, which merits and rewards repeated explorations."
Steve Reich's latest album, Daniel Variations, comprises both the title piece, written in 2006 in memory of slain reporter Daniel Pearl, and Variations for Vibes, Pianos, and Strings, composed in 2005 for the London Sinfonietta (which performs the piece on the recording) and choreographer Akram Khan. The New York Times's Steve Smith writes that the new collection finds the composer working across the divide into which his pieces are too-often categorized: the pre-Different Trains output focused on "processes and techniques" and those that followed that seminal 1988 work addressing "charged issues of identity, spirituality, and cultural politics."
The piece Daniel Variations, writes Smith, "avoids both sentimentality and vituperation," despite its subject matter. It is, instead "a work of contemplative commemoration, which merits and rewards repeated explorations." The second Variations piece, he says, "bears its attractions closer to the surface" and is one that "seems ideally suited to choreography" with the "shimmering, rippling rhythmic patterns" of its first and third movements coming on either side of the middle movement's "mesmerizing stillness."
To read the full review, visit nytimes.com.
