Steve Reich - Octet, Music for a Large Ensemble, Violin Phase (1980) CD-Rip
Artist: Steve Reich
Title: Octet, Music for a Large Ensemble, Violin Phase
Year Of Release: 1980
Label: ECM New Series
Genre: Classical
Quality: FLAC (image+.cue,log,scans)
Total Time: 48:30
Total Size: 316 Mb
WebSite: Album Preview
Tracklist: Title: Octet, Music for a Large Ensemble, Violin Phase
Year Of Release: 1980
Label: ECM New Series
Genre: Classical
Quality: FLAC (image+.cue,log,scans)
Total Time: 48:30
Total Size: 316 Mb
WebSite: Album Preview
1. Music For A Large Ensemble (12/78)
2. Violin Phase (10/67)
3. Octet (4/79)
Performers:
Music For A Large Ensemble - Russ Hertenberger, Glen Velez,Gary Shall, Richard Schwarz (marimbas); Bob Becker, David Van Thieghem (xylophones); James Preiss (vibraphone); Nurit Tilles, Edmund Niemann, Larry Karush, Steve Reich (pianos); Jay Clayton, Elizabeth Arnold (voices); Shem Guibbory, Robert Chausow (violins); Ruth Siegler, Claire Bergmann (violas); Chris Finckel, Michael Finckel (cellos); Lewis Paer, Judith Sugarmann (basses); Virgil Blackwell, Richard Cohen (clarinets); Mort Silver (flute); Ed Joffe, Vincent Gnojek (soprano saxophones); Douglas Hedwig, Marshall Farr, James Hamlin, James Dooley (trumpets).
Violin Phase - Shem Gibbory (violin).
Octet - Nurit Tilles, Edmund Niemann (pianos); Virgil Blackwell, Mort Silver (clarinets, bass clarinets, flutes, piccolo); Shem Guibbory, Robert Chausow (violins); Ruth Siegler (viola); Chris Finckel (cello).
Produced Manfred Eicher.
Steve Reich's commercial success had ballooned after his prior release on ECM, Music for 18 Musicians, and this collection of three compositions, two new and one from 1967, was the follow-up. Music for a Large Ensemble is very much of a piece with the prior work, using extended melodic lines, a larger palette of sound colors, and key changes every several minutes. It's charming and pleasantly busy in an industrious way but really covers little new ground. The remaining two pieces are where the real meat lies. Violin Phase was written early in the composer's career, when he was just working through the core ideas of his brand of minimalism alongside similar "phase" works for piano and electric organ. Scored for solo violin and played by the brilliant Shem Guibbory, the violinist plays against tapes of himself, beginning in strict unison but gradually speeding up or slowing down, generating one fascinatingly unexpected pattern after another. The intellectual rigor and breathtaking purity of the music makes one wish, perhaps, that Reich would forego the added ornamentation of his later years. Ironically, given the genre, some of the lines have an almost romantic quality to them, giving the work a striving, even heroic character. Octet represented a step ahead from the opening piece. Scaled back in instrumentation, with spikier (even jazzy) rhythms (bass clarinets scurrying rapidly hither and yon) and more overtly melodic material (some of it inspired by his recent study of Hebrew cantillation), Reich managed once again to successfully balance process with content in a manner that would reach its apex for this period with his subsequent Sextet. Listeners who only came to know Reich through his even more popular works like Different Trains and The Cave owe it to themselves to seek out recordings like this and earlier releases to hear his concept in its clearest and boldest context.