Rhythms unfold with a timeless grandeur

STEVE REICH: A CELEBRATION
Opera House Concert Hall
April 29

Reviewed by Peter McCallum, May 2012

THE term ''minimalism'' in music is a useful one because it instantly identifies a style based on repetition, patterns moving in and out of phase, and harmonic stasis. Yet as shown by this well-conceived program, featuring some of Steve Reich's major works since minimalism first gained traction in the 1960s, it is also inadequate to describe the range of textures this style has grown to encompass.

Although Reich developed the style from playing tape loops against one another, his style quickly consolidated around live performance, culminating in the major work from his first phase, Drumming (1971). Part One, played here, explored the phase possibilities of a simple rhythm with six players from Synergy Percussion on bongos, allowing the listener to pick out myriad resultant rhythms. Synergy juxtaposed this with Mallet Quartet (2009), showing how, in Reich's more recent music, the phases have become shorter, less hypnotic and more artefact than process.

Variations for Vibes, Pianos and Strings (2005), under Roland Peelman conducting players from Sydney Symphony and ACO young performer programs, has an assertive spiky first movement of stubborn intensity and rising excitement, a slower section achieving a certain serenity and return to quick music to close.

The American ensemble eighth blackbird took the second bracket, starting with another early work, Four Organs (1970), which builds and elongates a harmonic progression until it seems to cover everything with a single note. Tim Munro gave a brilliantly clear and beautifully balanced performance from memory of Vermont Counterpoint (1982). Double Sextet (2007) was played with brilliant edginess against their recorded doppelganger.

The celebration ended with an hour-long masterwork from Reich's middle years, Music for 18 Musicians, which unfolds complex layered patterns with the timeless wavelike grandeur, rolling and receding, each micro-pattern different, each macro-rhythm the same.

This review appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald