Customer Reviews

Steve Reich: Sextet; Six Marimbas

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Sextet/Six Marimbas represents a certain pinnacle in Steve Reich's career. While Six Marimbas is still classic minimalism (a necessary re-scoring of Six Pianos), Sextet is one of the most remarkable pieces of the last fifteen years. The piece more successfully integrates minimalist technique to the mainstream language of classical music, especially in the Third Movement. It also accomplishes a rare feat with percussion instruments: notes are given length, especially in the bowed vibraphone. The liner notes further explain Reich's composition ideas, but that isn't essential to enjoying the piece. Overall, Sextet successfully unites several academic ideas to produce beautiful sounding music.

I first heard this music on the BBC in a tent on the north west coast of Scotland in a freezing winter gale. But they didn't back announce it, so I had no clue what I just listened to. For years all I had was the memory of this gorgeous sound circling in my head, if you listen to it you'll understand. Eventually a percussionist/tenor/conductor friend identified it from my description and I bought it the next day. This is such a wonderful overloaded harmony I just wish there was much more music like this. There aren't many pieces of music that have ever made such an impression on me that I searched for years and remember exactly where and how I first heard it. For me Sextet is the lesser of the two pieces, but still well worth having even if it was the only thing on the disk. This is a wonderful clean clear recording, buy it!

Great cd, two great pieces by a master of the style. I write this review to rather pedantically correct other reviewers in that it is a bowed *vibraphone*, not bowed *marimba*, used to such interesting effect in the 'Sextet', as is made clear in the liner notes.

I can't get enough of "Six Marimbas". It is so soothing, warm and inviting. I listen to it over and over. I think "Six Marimbas" is one of Reich's most beautiful works.

This cd marks a cornerstone for Reich. On the delightful Sextet he does things with bowing marimbas or playing them normally. The first of its parts, of 5, unfolds brilliantly in his classic minimal manner. The 3rd is the MOST fun. The 5th, with its intricacies & the wild wild pulses at the end, always leaves me breathless. Then, Six Marimbas is one of his greatest even tapestries. I recommend this cd most highly for anyone interested in Reich.

Sextet is a very fun piece, with the gradually changing marimba melodies & also marimbas played with bows to get longer notes than a marimba can usually do. My favorite part of Sextet is the 3rd movement. & also, the way the 5th & final movement ends is amazing -- amazing -- it always leaves me breathless.

As for Six Marimbas, it's one of my favorite Reich pieces. A rescoring of Six Pianos. I have both versions, & the rescoring improved the piece infinitely; with marimbas, you can hear each note so well. & the way the music changes always makes you so curious to see what the next note to change will be & how.

This cd as a whole coheres so well, since the 2 different pieces that are melodically & rhythmically very different from each other are both for marimbas.

when Reich and partners recorded it in May 1986, Sextet was a recent composition - the product info in the booklet assigns it to 1985, but the liner notes make it clear that it was premiered in December 1984 in Paris, although in an incomplete version. It was originally conceived for a dance performance with the Laura Dean Dancers and Musicians, and the completed version had its American (danced) Premiere on October 31, 1985 at the Next Wave Festival of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The premiere concert performance took place at Avery Fischer Hall on January 20, 1986, presumably with the same performers as here. Its dance origin makes it a lively and entertaining piece, and its scoring for three marimbas, two vibraphones, two bass drums, two pianos, two synthesizers and various other percussion instruments provides for a great variety of colors. In particular, the long moans of the bowed vibraphone (I think that is what it is) that plays in track 2 are particularly eerie and fascinating, reminiscent of a musical saw, really. I'm no great fan of the minimalist/repetitive music of Glass and Adams, I sometimes make an exception for Riley (both in his early repetitive period and in his later, world-music influenced style), and I'll make one too for Reich. I've found pieces like Drumming or Six Pianos to be very entertaining, and I'll add this one.

Speaking of Six Pianos (1973), Six Marimbas is in fact the re-rescoring of it, made in 1986 - also a recent piece when the recording was made, then. The best version I've heard of the original Six Pianos is not Reich's (Reich: Drumming; Six Pianos; Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ), but the more recent one by Piano Circus (Steve Reich: Six Pianos; Terry Riley: In C): dynamic, playful, high-tension, colorful, sparkling - and better recorded. Comparatively, the effect of the version for marimbas (played here at a perceptibly slower tempo, too) is softer, sweeter, more soothing, less percussive, less scintillating in its timbral colors - and somewhat more monotonous in its overall effect, to my ears, but certainly less agressive, too. If I may dare, Six Pianos is music from New York, Six Marimbas music for the California beaches. Reich was born in New York, but after the divorce of his parents, when he was one year old, he divided his time between New York and California.

Detailed liner notes by Reich himself. The only drawback then is the stingy TT of 42:47. These were still LP days, remember?

Le rythme est une partie essentielle et unique chez Reich, et cet instrument s'intègre parfaitement dans cette composition. Un très bon disque, parmi mes préférés de ce grand composteur!

Quite exhilerating, stark, simple yet complex marimba musical arrangements by 20th Century (and 21st) composer Steve Reich is wonderful to even this progressive rock fan who admittedly hasn't had much exposure to this type of music. The musical nucleus of this centripetal web keeps the listener transfixed on a musical point that grows, wavers, momentarily disappears and returns with renewed intensity causing the listener to stare into the insistent sound as if by gunpoint, helplessly hypnotized and bondaged towards a finale. Rather mind boggling at times it's not recommended for in your car listening. You're liable to find yourself cruising down a road that didn't exist before you got there.