Steve REICH (b. 1936)
Music for 18 Musicians (1974-6) [54:33]
Ensemble Links/Rémi Durupt
rec. March 2020, Théâtre Le Maillon, Strasbourg, France
KAIROS 0015043KAI [54:33]
I think Steve Reich peaked early: the works he wrote between 1973, when he completed Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ, and 1983, when he completed the choral work The Desert Music, seem to me his best. They have a radiance and glow which is absent both from his earlier works, which I consider are more of the nature of studies or sketches, and from the later ones, which do not seem to bring anything new, while losing that indefinable radiance. (I know that others take a different view, and that the string quartet Different Trains, of 1988, in particular, has been widely admired.) Music for 18 Instruments, which is dated 1974-6, comes near the beginning of this period and is generally, and, I think, rightly, considered his masterpiece.
At this stage of his career Reich, like his near-contemporary Philip Glass, did not write for normal orchestras or standard combinations, but for ensembles which each of them created specifically to perform their own works, in which they themselves performed and which they toured around. This is the longest and largest of Reich’s pure minimalist works. For some years it was not available to anyone other than Reich’s own group, Steve Reich and Musicians, and the score was not published. Eventually it was, and it has now been performed and recorded by several other ensembles. Reich himself has recorded it at least twice, and his first version, the 1978 one on ECM, created a considerable stir.
However, I do not believe that there are such things as definitive performances of music in the Western classical tradition. One of the glories of the art is precisely that works can and should be taken up by new performers who can convey their own vision of them. So, although we are glad to have, for example, recordings of Stravinsky and Britten conducting their own works, this does not preclude others from performing and them and, indeed, not just copying the composers’ own versions. Although I know Reich’s first recording of this work, I deliberately did not listen to it in preparing this review, as I wanted to see what this new version had to say in its own right.
The work itself is written for an ensemble of two clarinets doubling bass clarinets, four pianos, six percussionists mainly playing marimbas and xylophones, violin, cello and four wordless female voices. Although the work can be played by an ensemble of eighteen, this involves extensive doubling, and the composer recommended using larger numbers if possible. The performance here uses twenty players, one of whom, the conductor Rémi Durupt, also plays the vibraphone and piano. The work itself is in fourteen sections, of which the first and last are named Pulses and contain the thematic material, which is based on a cycle of eleven chords. The intervening sections are each based on one of the eleven chords; the third chord is used for two of these. There are also two types of rhythm: one is the regular repetitive patterns in the piano and mallet instruments, which continue throughout. The other is that of the human breath, as there are passages which should be played for as long as the breath can sustain them. The bass clarinet is particularly important in these – incidentally, Reich here seems to have borrowed from the end of the first movement of Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements, as the throbbing of the bass clarinet is very like that in the Stravinsky. Changes from one section to the next are signalled by a short, nonrepeating passage on the vibraphone, played by the conductor.
This may sound rather dry, but there is nothing dry about this piece. As I said at the outset, it is a radiant work, indeed joyous, easy to listen to and absorbing but in no way superficial or trivial. The constant pulse and the slowness of the harmonic changes may tend to induce a trance-like feeling, but actually it is more rewarding to concentrate and listen as to any other musical work. I did wonder whether there was much scope for interpretation, or whether all performances would sound alike. However, there are a number of choices the performers make which will affect the listening experience. The exact timbre of the various marimbas and xylophones, that of the solitary vibraphone which signals changes – the motor is turned off and the sound is more like a full-bodied glockenspiel – and, above all, the varying breath capacities of different players. It is because of this that Reich’s second recording, on Nonesuch, is eleven minutes longer than his first, on ECM. This new version is two minutes shorter than Reich’s first, but you don’t notice it.
Where this version scores particularly highly is in the quality of the sound. It is clear and not mushy: the individual lines can be distinguished but they blend as they should and the voices form part of the texture rather than standing out. Rémi Durupt performs both as a conductor and as a percussionist and he cofounded Links, which is an experimental and exploratory ensemble. The different sections are separately tracked, which is convenient if you want to study one section or get interrupted while listening; of course they play continuously (there is one version in which they don’t). The ECM version will always hold a place, since it is the one which made the piece’s reputation, but this new one is admirable in its own right.
Stephen Barber
