MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

 


MDT AmazonUK AmazonUS

Steve REICH (b.1936)
Kuniko Plays Reich
Electric Counterpoint Version for Percussions:-
Movement I: Fast [6:53]
Movement II: Slow [3:22]
Movement III: Fast [4:37]
Six Marimbas Counterpoint [16:26]
Vermont Counterpoint Version for Vibraphone [9:48]
Kuniko Kato (percussion)
rec. Nagoya University of Arts, School of Music, Nagoya, Japan, 28-29 March 2010.
LINN CKD 385 [41:18]

Experience Classicsonline



 
Sometimes you don’t want to know how the sausage is made. You want to enjoy it, and appreciate its savoury qualities, but not have someone tell you all the details. Reading the liner-notes for this album, I had the same thought. There may be some people - most likely percussionists - who want to know that for Electric Counterpoint, Kuniko Kato used eight parts with steel pans, including one tenor pan and a pair of guitar pans. There may also be some people who want to read a “making of” of the disc, where the performer explains how it was recorded, produced and mixed, and especially highlighting how many times she e-mailed Steve Reich to get his approval for her arrangements.
 
Sometimes it’s best to just let the music speak for itself.
 
This disc contains percussion arrangements of three works by Steve Reich, performed by percussionist Kuniko Kato using multiple overdubs. The artist says, “All three pieces were solo overdubbed; however I played through all the parts from the beginning to the end, without using loops or quantisation in order to emphasise the live atmosphere in ensemble performance. All of the mixings are based on my concepts and I closely collaborated with each recording engineer.”
 
Electric Counterpoint was scored for “as many as ten guitars and two electric bass parts”, which were taped, and an additional guitar performing live. Here, Kuniko’s arrangement loses the fluid, pulsing sound of the guitar, but creates its own sound-world, very close to other Steve Reich works for percussion. The effect is interesting and attractive, and listening to this piece made me forget what the original sounds like. It takes on a world of its own as a more jumpy work, and has an attractive sound and energy.
 
Six Marimbas Counterpoint is an arrangement of Six Marimbas, which, itself, is an adaptation of one of Steve Reich’s seminal works, Six Pianos. Kuniko performs this with one part live and five parts on tape. Compared to Reich’s own recording of this work, the sound is fuller and richer here, but the music is similar, and the tempo is close enough to the original that it differs by only a few seconds. This is, in my opinion, one of Reich’s most interesting works, and perhaps one of the best ways to discover his music. The original Six Pianos has, I think, a more attractive sound than the version for marimbas, but it’s obvious that getting six pianos on a stage is difficult. This work is full of gorgeous rhythmic interplay among the different instruments, based around very strict rhythms.
 
Finally, Vermont Counterpoint Version for Vibraphone is an arrangement of a work scored for eight flutes and tape. Here, played on vibraphone, it gives a much different tone than the original, yet it works just as well. As it is a work based on rhythmic structures, percussion fits the music, and the sound Kuniko achieves is quite attractive. The mixing is interesting as well, with a broad soundstage spreading out the various instruments so they sound both separate and connected at the same time.
 
If you’re a fan of Steve Reich’s work, you’ll certainly find this an interesting disc. If not, it may not be the best place to start, as the somewhat uniform approach of three works for percussion may not be the ideal gateway to this type of minimalism. But Reich’s music is based on rhythm, and percussion is the most apt type of instrument to perform it.
 
Well conceived, and very well recorded, the only downside to this enjoyable disc is that it is a mere 41 minutes. One or two more works by Reich would have been nice.
 
Kirk McElhearn


Kirk McElhearn writes about more than just music on his blog Kirkville (http://www.mcelhearn.com).
 



 

 

 



 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.