Steve Reich's 75th was celebrated in style at Carnegie Hall Saturday night with an all-Reich concert that included the NY premieres of WTC 9/11, Mallet Quartet, and 2x5 and a performance of Double Sextet. Carnegie Hall "assembled a starry roster of new-music ensembles," says the New York Times, "and the results will be hard to top." NPR says the concert showed that Reich "continues to make innovative music and is still one of the most important and influential voices of our era." The pieces "were individually marvelous," says SPIN, "and collectively provided a terrific summing up of what Reich is all about ... [E]very piece of the evening was a small miracle." The composer and performers head next to London for Reverberations, the Barbican's two-day celebration of Reich's work and influences.
Steve Reich's 75th birth year was celebrated in style at Carnegie Hall in New York on Saturday night with an all-Reich concert that featured the New York premieres of WTC 9/11, Reich's musical response to the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center, with what the New York Times calls its "pointedly emotional appeal," performed by Kronos Quartet; Mallet Quartet, performed by So Percussion; and what the Times calls an "irresistibly energetic performance" of 2x5 by Bang on a Can All-Stars and Friends, including guitarist Bryce Dessner of The National and drummer Glenn Kotche. Bang on a Can All-Stars were then joined by eighth blackbird for a performance of Reich's Pulitzer Prize-winning piece, Double Sextet. (The composer is pictured, at left, in a photograph from Carnegie Hall of the evening's rehearsals.)
Given how frequently Reich's works are performed throughout the regular concert season, New York Times music critic Allan Kozinn wonders how best one might differentiate such an important occasion. "One way is to assemble a starry roster of new-music ensembles and have them perform music that Mr. Reich has written for them," he answers. "That was what Carnegie Hall did on Saturday evening, and the results will be hard to top."
Read Kozinn's complete concert review at nytimes.com.
---
NPR says that Reich "continues to make innovative music and is still one of the most important and influential voices of our era." Reviewing the show for the Deceptive Cadence blog from NPR Classical, Tsioulcas writes: "That fact became vivid reality this past Saturday evening at Carnegie Hall, when Reich was feted with a concert that was not at all a retrospective."
About WTC 9/11, she suggests: "Reich's piece crystallizes some of the anxiety and searching that characterized not just the chaos and pain of the attack and its immediate aftermath, but the great unknowns that have characterized the last decade for all of us, last night's Osama bin Laden news notwithstanding."
Tsioulcas concludes: "Double Sextet is a tightly coiled thing that positively vibrates with an inner energy, yet has lyricism at its core, and a sense of space and line thanks to harmonies that constantly shift and are reshuffled within a larger form. Such lacunae and harmonic movements are rather new in Reich's music, but that's such a large part of the pleasure of his recent work, the restless search of exploring new ground."
Read the complete review at npr.org.
---
The pieces "were individually marvelous," says SPIN reviewer Glenn Kenny, "and collectively provided a terrific summing up of what Reich is all about."
Of the program's opening piece, Mallet Quartet, Kenny writes: "There's often a joyous lightness to Reich's work, and it was in full evidence here; the fifteen-minute composition was some kind of miniature crystal cathedral of sound, full of light and air." He describes WTC 9/11 as "both intellectually provocative and deeply moving" and calls 2x5 "spectacular."
Kenny concludes: "In the end, every piece of the evening was a small miracle, and the composer was clearly more than chuffed as he came on stage for his bows at the end ... The crowd remained transported."
Read the complete concert review at spin.com.
---
Village Voice reviewer Seth Colter Walls says Reich "is capital-I Important. That his music will survive him is beyond question. Also not up for debate is whether Reich stands as an indispensable part of New York's musical firmament." Colter Walls suggests that the news of Osama bin Laden's death, which followed the concert by some 24 hours, puts the WTC 9/11 premiere in a different context.
Whatever the context, the composer, at 75, still showed himself to be "an artist still leaning new tricks" with these new pieces.
"At this point, we're 10 years into the routine of making jokes about how and what might culturally constitute a score for the terrorists—that is, 'if we don't do this, then they win," Coulter Walls concludes, "but damn it if Reich being yet on the make for new New York sounds doesn't feel like some kind of victory for us."
Read the review at villagevoice.com.
---
Arts Journal's Howard Mandel says the evening's performers "poured enthusiasm, precision and a sense of discovery into four recent Reich pieces, making their Master's overlays, cycles and cells variously delightful, ominous, rockin', tense, melodramatic and exotic. Reich writes music that's both reassuring and subversive, and his 75th birthday concert at Carnegie Hall provided both in delicate yet confident balance." Read the review at artsjournal.com.
---
Reich's birthday celebrations head next to the London, where the Barbican presents Reverberations, a musical marathon this coming weekend focused on Reich's musical influence and his compositions. Reverberations includes all of the groups from the Carnegie Hall concert and more.
In honor of the event, Nonesuch Records, the Barbican, and Reich's publisher, Boosey & Hawkes, are offering a special prize package. For more information and to enter to win, head to boosey.com now and answer a trivia question about the composer. Contest entries must be received by tomorrow, Tuesday, May 3, at 3 PM GMT for a chance to win.
---
To pick up a copy of Double Sextet / 2x5 or any of the albums in the Steve Reich Nonesuch catalog, head to the Nonesuch Store now, where orders include high-quality, 320 kbps of the albums at checkout.
- Log in to post comments
