Steve Reich was featured on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday. In honor of the composer's 75th birthday, the program examines the work and impact of "arguably the most influential composer of his generation," whose music has "inspired generations of composers whose work can be heard in concert halls, dance clubs, and rock festivals." The composer joined the London Symphony Orchestra in concert at Barbican Hall, to which the Daily Telegraph gives a perfect five stars. Cité de la Musique in Paris continued its Reich birthday festival, Pulsations, with a performance of choreographer Karine Saporta's Notes, now available to watch online.
Steve Reich was featured on the latest episode of NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday. In honor of the composer's 75th birthday earlier this month, the program examines the work and impact of Reich, "arguably the most influential composer of his generation," whose music has "inspired generations of composers whose work can be heard in concert halls, dance clubs, and rock festivals." NPR's Gail Wein spoke with Steve Reich and with two of the composers to have been influenced by him, David Lang and The National's Bryce Dessner.
"That young musicians around the world want to and actually do play my music very well," says Reich, "and to go around and hear that, in reality, is the best present a composer could possibly ask for."
Listen to the Weekend Edition piece at npr.org.
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Two such performances took place in London this weekend, when the London Symphony Orchestra offered the latest of the events celebrating Steve Reich's 75th birthday around the world all year long. On Saturday afternoon, principals from the orchestra gave a performance demonstration with students from the Guildhall School at LSO St. Luke's. The full orchestra, led by conductor Kristjan Järvi, followed with an evening concert featuring an all-Reich program at Barbican Hall with Synergy Vocals. On the program were Three Movements, The Four Sections, The Desert Music, and Clapping Music, for which the composer was one of the performers (and which Dessner tells NPR his group performs backstage before each of its own concerts).
The Daily Telegraph gives the Barbican concert a perfect five stars. Writing of Clapping Music, the concert's opening piece, the Telegraph's Ivan Hewett says: "The fact that this piece has kept its charm is the most eloquent proof that minimalism is a permanent addition to the realm of music and not a passing fad. The three pieces that followed from the Eighties filled out our sense of its possibilities, and Reich’s own achievement." Read the five-star review at telegraph.co.uk.
The Evening Standard gives the concert four stars. Also writing of Clapping Music, the paper's Nick Kimberley says "its overlapping dislocations remain a small miracle of complexity within simplicity, and vice-versa," with the succeeding pieces providing "a harmonically richer but no less hypnotic experience." Read the review at thisislondon.co.uk.
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Also taking place this weekend was the ongoing Pulsations festival at the Cité de la Musique in Paris honoring the composer. On Saturday, percussion students from the Conservatoire de Paris performed Reich's 1986 piece Six Marimbas in a free concert at Rue Musicale. Also on Saturday, and again on Sunday, in the Salles des Concerts, choreographer Karine Saporta presents a new version of her piece Notes (2008), including the work of video artist Angie Eng and set to the music of Steve Reich: Violin Phase, Different Trains, It's Gonna Rain, and Triple Quartet. You can watch Sunday's performance in the video at citedelamusique.tv; the performance begins about ten minutes in.
Pulsations concludes tomorrow night with a concert in the Salles des Concerts by the Brussels Philharmonic, led by Michel Tabachnik, pairing Reich's The Desert Music (1983) with Beethoven's Symphony No. 5.
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To peruse Steve Reich's Nonesuch catalog, head to the Nonesuch Store, where CD orders include high-quality, 320 kbps MP3s at checkout.
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