United States ‘A Steve Reich Celebration’: Colin Currie Group, Synergy Vocals. Presented by Cal Performances, Zellerbach Hall, University of California, Berkeley, 3.11.2022. (HS)
Steve Reich – Tehillim; Traveler’s Prayer; Music for 18 Musicians
Over the years, Steve Reich’s music has hewed closest to the unique type of minimalism that he, Philip Glass and John Adams, probably the most distinguished composers in that type, pioneered within the Nineteen Seventies. All three have, after all, expanded their musical palates significantly since then, including their very own wealthy concepts to late-twentieth and twenty-first century classical music.
To my ears, Reich’s works have at all times centered most on rhythmic components, symbolized by his still-delightful Clapping Music. That brief piece from 1972 distilled his infinite fascination with phased rhythms (shifting rhythmic phrases barely in opposition to one another to achieve complexity) into an entertaining rhythm-canon. Music for 18 Musicians, which debuted in 1976, exploded the thought. To the infinite shifts in rhythm, Reich steadily expanded melodic gestures and clustered harmonies into an hour-long feast.
The sheer size and infinite ostinatos can drive some listeners to distraction, after all, however in a wholehearted efficiency in Berkeley, the Colin Currie Group made the marathon into a chronic, sinuous, sonorous dance.
Percussionist and conductor Currie, the instrumental ensemble and Synergy Vocals have lengthy been proponents of Reich’s music. They’ve premiered various his latest works, most lately Traveler’s Prayer, the centerpiece of this system, which acquired its West Coast premiere at Zellerbach Hall Thursday.
Although the rating for Music for 18 Musicians suggests a 55-minute operating time, this efficiency spilled over to an hour and ten minutes. The variation stems from the construction, which depends on cues from the centrally positioned metallophone (a vibraphone with no motor) to alert the remainder of the band to maneuver from one part to the subsequent. The rating asks the singers and clarinet gamers to carry their sustained notes for so long as their breaths can go earlier than transferring on to the subsequent gesture.
There was, in consequence, a sense of improvisation to the efficiency, because the mallet devices and maracas established an unchanging tempo. (This required occasional tag-team switches to cut back fatigue by the gamers.) Alternating with bass clarinets, a violin and a cello, two clarinets added extra texture in each rhythm and tone. Four girls singers contributed sustained pedal tones and chords.
These components expanded and contracted over the course of the piece, making a palpable sense of waves washing gently in opposition to the shore. At every shift, the gestures from the lead devices began off with a couple of notes, extending the phrase as they repeated, bringing in additional complexity and definition. Reich, like his up to date minimalists in the present day, wouldn’t let these components go on for thus lengthy – his items have a tendency to come back in at about half-hour reasonably than an hour-plus. But the results of such a devoted efficiency stays hypnotic and memorable.
Traveler’s Prayer debuted on the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam in 2021 and made its U.S. premiere at Carnegie Hall solely final week. Although most of Reich’s work leans in on syncopated rhythms, Traveler’s Prayer shapes a harmony-forward factor of magnificence. Dissonances abound, however they have an inclination towards cluster chords on the diatonic scale reasonably than sharp-edged minor seconds, main sevenths and different chromatic clashes. At instances it felt like an opulent jazz ballad, the smooth edges of the orchestration (tuned mallet percussion, piano and strings) contributing to a chic gentleness.
Most of all, Reich’s heartfelt setting of the Hebrew Tefilat Haderech (identified in English as Traveler’s Prayer or Wayfarer’s Prayer) alludes to one thing greater than a blessing earlier than an earthly journey. The 86-year-old composer, in his program be aware, means that it might additionally apply to ‘travel from this world to the next’. The smooth, regular tread of the tempo and the woven textures of the music’s polyphony appeared to underline that concept.
The first part is about to a standard Ashkenazi Jewish melody on the verse from Exodus, ‘Behold, I send a messenger before you to protect you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared’; and, from Genesis, ‘To Your lifeline I cling, Eternal, I cling Eternal, to Your lifeline, Eternal, to Your lifeline I cling’. The taste was very completely different from the form of floating vocal results of Reich’s personal melody for Psalm 121 to the phrases ‘The Eternal will guard your departure and your arrival from now till the end of time’.
The singers – main with tenors Will Wright and Benedict Hymas – do recite the prayer in Hebrew, however with out projected titles or a libretto in this system it was not possible to attach the musical phrasing with the ideas. The normal feeling, although, was certainly one of quiet serenity and hope, the sustained harmonic richness bringing it house.
The distinction with this system’s different works was hanging. Tehillim, which opened the live performance, dates from 1981, at some extent when Reich started to embrace his Jewish cultural roots. The large ensemble, bristling with the colours of woodwinds and brass in opposition to the sustained sounds of strings and the composer’s signature fascination with punchy rhythms articulated by mallet percussion, made a joyful paean of this exuberant piece.
One by one the singers – sopranos Carolyn Jaya-Ratnam, Micaela Haslam, Amanda Morrison and Rachel Weston and alto Heather Cairncross – wove their sound into the combo, their voices dancing in opposition to the complicated, steadily shifting rhythms. With pinpoint intonation and articulation, every singer’s distinct vocal sound combined seamlessly with the ensemble and with one another.
The phrases had been from Psalms 18, 19, 34 and 150. Without titles or a libretto, the small print had been unclear, however the joyful sound in opposition to crisp percussion (clapping, small tambourines with out jingles, small cymbals) was unmistakable. The ultimate hallelujah produced large grins and enthusiasm from the viewers.
Harvey Steiman