Listening to this CD has been something of a nostalgia trip for
me. The Ransom Wilson performances of Vermont Counterpoint
and Eight Lines appeared on EMI in 1984, along with
a cracking performance of John Adams’s Grand Pianola Music,
this time conducted by Ransom Wilson. The original programme of
this album has been available on CD, but the nice Charles Demuth
painting on the cover, ‘My Egypt’ from 1927 becomes a bit lost
on the smaller format when compared to the nice big LP. Wilson
became something of a minimalism zealot at the time, and it is
his arrangement of Steve Reich’s Octet that becomes the
piece Eight Lines on this recording.
Ignoring
the typo on the back of this release which has Ransom Wilson
as a clarinettist; Vermont Counterpoint is made by recording
nine ‘ensemble’ parts of three piccolos, three flutes and three
alto flutes. There are two solo parts played on each instrument
successively, and Ransom Wilson plays all of these. We prepared
a new recording of this piece for the 2003 Steve Reich festival
at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, and the mind-mangling
process of getting each part to fit nearly caused the player
a nervous breakdown. It’s a tricky job, but Ransom Wilson makes
it sound effortless. His recording does sound a little artificial
now – something which is almost unavoidable with all that overdubbing,
but is still pretty definitive. This piece is great fun, and
has that kind of hypnotic charm which lingers surprisingly long
in the mind after a spin of the disc. I had forgotten how much
layering goes on with the parts, bringing the alto flutes in
closer to balance with the piccolos, which sometimes sound like
a chattering menagerie further away in the background. The only
other commercial version of this piece I know to be available
is on a Kronos Quartet release, but arranged for marimbas and
called Tokyo/Vermont Counterpoint.
For
the other Steve Reich works I’ve referred to the Bang on a Can
ensemble recording on a Nonesuch CD, 7559-79481-2. I still have
an affection for the 1980 mallet instrument-heavy recording
of Octet on ECM, but this differs in too many ways from
Eight Lines to bear comparison, and is in any case the
version which Reich withdrew after making his own arrangement
of the work, the one played by Bang on a Can. The Bang on a
Can strings are more natural sounding but a bit thinner than
the multiple instruments of the Solisti New York, which by comparison
sound a bit phasey. Both performances have the right kind of
bounce however. The Nonesuch recording is drier and wins on
detail, but Ransom Wilson still provides a majestic flute solo
which has more zip than the player from Bang on a Can, who I
can’t name as there are several, and they don’t say who plays
what.
I
remember seeing New York Counterpoint played live on
the stage in the Royal College of music, and the spatial speaker
installation made for an unforgettable experience to which a
mere stereo recording can never quite do justice. Like Vermont
Counterpoint, the piece gathers together multiple overdubbed
parts of nine B-flat clarinets and three bass clarinets. Unlike
the flute work this has three movements, fast-slow(er)-fast,
a familiar Reich pattern. Alain Damiens has a nice,
woody Wurlitzer clarinet sound on the EMI disc, and I very much
enjoy his swinging, mellow sound. Evan Ziporyn has the supreme
advantage of three access points for each movement on her Nonesuch
recording, which means you can click on the groovy third movement
and start dancing straight away. Her clarinets have a slightly
more neutral sound and her articulation is a little less sharp,
allowing the fading ostinato repeated notes to melt into each
other a little more subtly. Her bass clarinet in the last movement
sounds as if played with deliberate key slaps, which gives it
a different character. This is a case of swings and roundabouts,
and I only wish EMI had seen fit to provide cues for each section
on this re-release – I do love a good dance.
Four
Organs is played by, yes,
you read it correctly, Michael Tilson Thomas, who also had the
work arranged for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. This is one
of the most minimal of Reich’s works, with an unchanging dominant
eleventh chord played on four small electric Farfisa organs;
in 1970 one of the standard keyboards carried by every self-respecting
rock band. The chord gradually augments over two maracas which
keep the beat. The more recent Nonesuch recording has more impact
and a greater stereo spread between the instruments. The maracas
also have more presence in the more recent recording, and I’ve
been known to use it to encourage my daughter to clean her teeth.
Again however, I find little to choose between this and the
older 1973 EMI version, which now has somewhat historic status,
though not quite as much as the premiere recording which had
Philip Glass as one of the organists.
Putting
Steve Reich alongside Philip Glass on one CD would seem logical,
but the gentle world of Façades really has about as much
to do with Four Organs as Megadeth does with Enya. The
pieces on this disc have of course been around for ages, and
were originally recorded by the Glass Ensemble for CBS. These
nice London Chamber orchestra recordings were a popular choice
on the Virgin label in the 1990s on an album called ‘Minimalist’
which also had Reich’s Eight Lines. Both of the works
on this disc have a background in the visual arts. Façades
was originally intended for the film Koyaanisqatsi
but never made it into the final cut. Company from the
same year, went with a dramatisation of Samuel Beckett’s novella
of the same name. This latter piece has some more dramatic writing
in some of its four movements, but is essentially harmless and
pleasant aural wallpaper which would have made effective incidental
music for such a production.
All
in all a good value release for someone interested in an introduction
to ‘minimal’ music, and that of earlier Steve Reich in particular.
Those switched on by the grooves in New York Counterpoint should
also seek out the Electric Counterpoint for guitars, whose
third section will also have you on your feet and moovin’. Do
I prefer Bang on a Can for the Reich pieces? Ultimately yes, by
a small margin, but then you have to put up with paying full whack
for an appallingly short CD of just under 45 minutes. With this
new EMI compilation you get all that and a whole lot of nice extras,
so this has to be a firm recommendation to anyone interested in
the repertoire, or just keen for a bit of 20th century
nostalgia.
Dominy Clements
see also Review
by Rob Barnett
Ransom Wilson (flutes, Vermont Counterpoint, Eight Lines),
Solisti New York (Eight Lines), Alain Damiens (clarinet,
New York Counterpoint), Michael Tilson Thomas (organs, Four
Organs) and London Chamber Orchestra/Christopher Warren-Green
(Façades, Company) 
