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Two recent works by US minimalist Steve Reich are paired here, the Double Sextet written in 2006 and 5x2 in 2008, with the recording dating from 2009, shortly after both premieres. . Both works are cast in three movements and last a bit over twenty minutes, so this is a short disc. I found the Double Sextet was an enjoyable piece, very reminiscent of some earlier Reich pieces, while 5x2 is I think pretty clearly a failure, although an interesting failure.
The Double Sextet has a similar sound as the Music for Mallet Instruments, Organ and Strings, which has long been one of my favorite Reich compositions, but without the quasi-electric overlay that the organ gives the latter. For me, Reich’s writing in this style seems to epitomize late 20th-century America – the bustling repetition, occasional abrupt changes from one texture to the next, the beautiful sound, sleek and efficient and pleasant. The analogy is by definition unprovable, so let’s treat as my purely personal reaction. Why not pick Cindy Lauper’s pop music or a Wynton Marsalis album or even say some of Milton Babbitt’s late works and say that they exemplify the era? I’m sure arguments can be made for each of these. For me, Reich’s streamlined repetition, and elegant and sleek textures with their mix of oscillating instruments matched against the patterns in the percussion, that call forth the images of a bustling metropolis, the glass skyscrapers and blue skies. Reich manages to convert the feel of the era into musical form, a distillation. That sort of distillation a while ago, in the era of high art, was thought to be one of the aims of art music. With that aesthetic almost forgotten, I find it a bit surprising to think of Reich’s art as providing exactly that sort of experience.
5x2 is not a good piece. In fact, the central Slow movement is so clumsy that I find it a tad embarrassing. I could make a glib quip, like how 5x2 sounds to me a lot like 1970s jazz/rock fusion, the deeply out-of-fashion style of bands like Weather Report. Instead, I’ll say that 5x2 highlights why Reich’s other music is so good, a “contrast-gaining” experience. Works like Music for 18 Musicians or the Double Sextet are built from blocks of sound with patterns gradually shifting and varying to bit-by-bit to travel to a new texture or sound. That’s a classic description of Reich’s music. 5x2 omits the shifting pattern and gradual variation. The Bang on a Can Ensemble instead shifts from one block of repeated music to another, a bit like a long rock song without any vocals. It makes for what is just not very intriguing music. I doubt I’ll listen to it ever again after writing this review.
Re the Pulitzer Prize; the prize committee deigned to give Reich the award in 2009 for the Double Sextet, after ignoring him in the 1970s and 1980s when he was writing what I think was some of the great American music of the time. (It even decided not to issue an award in 1981 to anyone at all, the same year “Tehillim” was premiered -- a performance which I incidentally had the pleasure of attending.) This intentional neglect points to the deep institutional animus that existed for decades within academia towards minimalist music. I had a music teacher of mine even once say back then that the fact that an obscure and now forgotten quasi-minimalist composer’s lack of success in comparison to Steve Reich was merely “luck.” So the award serves as a sort of apology or backtracking, maybe a half-hearted one.
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J. J. Blackburn
2 x 5 stars from me
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 15, 2010
