Britten Sinfonia: Steve Reich at 80 at Colston Hall - Review

Posted on: 2016-11-15

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Britten Sinfonia doffed its cap and played its heart out to mark the 80th birthday of minimalist music legend Steve Reich at Bristol's Colston Hall on Monday 14 November 2016.


Reich - a towering figure in, not just the sphere of musical minimalism, but contemporary American music overall - has, alongside the likes of Terry Riley, John Adams and Philip Glass, continually developed and evolved his musical language and crafted some of the most original, pioneering and profound compositions of the 20th and 21st centuries. 

 

Incorporating often unorthodox additions in to his music such as amplification, tape loops, sampling and pre-recorded material, the Reich 'sound' is usually immediately identifiable within the first few bars, not only because of its frequently jarring, propulsive rhythms but also through its instrumentation which often utilizes marimbas, pianos, glockenspiel, vibes and voices. 

 

His influence hasn't just penetrated the musical heart and soul of modern classical composers either. David Bowie, Brian Eno, Aphex Twin, Kraftwerk and Radiohead have all cited him a major influence on their own work as well. 

Britten Sinfonia: Steve Reich at 80 at Colston Hall - Review

Under the assured, confident conducting of Clark Rundell, Different Trains was a suitably Reichian and epic way to kick off the concert. The Grammy Award-winning piece has lost none of its monumental potency and power, the three movement composition for string quartet and tape taking its inspiration from Reich's frequent train journeys from New York to Los Angeles to visit his separated parents and his realisation that, if he'd been living in Europe, his peregrination and ultimate fate might have resulted in a very different, grim outcome. 

 

Instruments mimicked the cadences and rhythms of recorded speech alongside looped tape, and plenty of spiky, strident string playing ensured its raw energy and relentless sonic drive lost none of its tour de force impassioned, sometimes haunting evocations and aural gutsiness.

 

Pulse - a new, more abstract piece - composed for wind ensemble, strings, piano and electric bass, is instantly of strong Reichian flavour, the steady, eponymous pulse provided by the electric bass, overlaid with a very American-style openness of textures and harmonies that made it simultaneously recognisable in tone yet galvanizingly, conceptually fresh. 

 

The second half of the concert was taken up completely by the relatively lesser-known and performed video opera, Three Tales, composed in 2002 which Reich wrote in collaboration his wife, video artist Beryl Korot. 

 

Focusing on the controversial dangers of 20th-century science and technology, the three tales in question are the 1937 Hindenberg airship disaster, the explosion of the first hydrogen bomb on Bikini atoll in 1946, and the genetic cloning of Dolly the sheep. And with a running time of almost an hour, it was long. In fact, too long, evidenced eventually towards the end by the slightly uncomfortable, agitated seat-shuffling of some of the audience. 

 

Make no mistake, there is some sensational music in there - arguably, in fact, some of Reich's best - but the total, combined amalgam of screen projections, talking heads, sampled speech, and overload of often quick-cut visuals meant the whole thing became something of a jumbled, sporadic, inconsistent hodge-podge of images and sound. It would have been a much more effective musical multi-media exercise had it been half the length and not quite so pretentiously had ideas above its general grasp. 

 

Nevertheless, the sum total of the evening was a concert of often groundbreaking, vital compositions by one of modern music's most influential, important and unique composing voices, all performed with impressively plucky fire and vigour by the sensational Britten Sinfonia and Synergy Vocals. 

4/5



Article by:

Jamie Caddick

Jamie is a writer, blogger, journalist, critic, film fan, soundtrack nerd and all-round Bristolian good egg.  He loves the music of Philip Glass, the art of Salvador Dali, the writings of Charles Bukowksi and Hunter S Thompson, the irreverence of Harry Hill, and the timeless, straw-chomping exuberance of The Wurzels.  You can sometimes find him railing against a surging tide of passing cyclists, or gorging himself senseless on the Oriental delights of a Cosmos all-you-can-eat buffet.