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Since the Amazon system automatically collates the reviews of the original CD-reissue of Reich's Drumming/Six Pianos/Music for Mallet Instruments (in their 20th Century Classics collection from the late 1980s, ASIN B000026D3A) and the later reissue of Drumming alone, ASIN B0000D7Z63, in the 20/21 collection, let me point out that it is the former that I have and am reviewing. I don't know if DG's later reissue is remastered and sonically different from the first CD incarnation.
Anyway, these compositions (completed between 1971 and 1973) and recordings (January 1974) are historically important in the development of repetitive minimalism, and in the recognition of Reich's compositional stature. As he writes himself in the thorough and informative liner notes, "Drumming [completed in 1971], in the context of my own music, is the final refinement of the phasing technique, in which two or three identical instruments playing the same repeating melodic pattern gradually move out of synchronization with each other." But "the work also introduces several new techniques: (1) gradual changes of timbre while pitch and rhythm remain constant, (2) the use of the human voice in an instrumental ensemble imitating the exact sound of the instruments, (3) the process of gradually substituting beats for rests (or rests for beats) within a constantly repeating rhythmic cycle".
But of course, one listens to music - especially forty years later! - not for its historical importance but for the enjoyment it provides. Reich's Drumming is, first, pure rhythm. Whereas, in pieces like Music for Mallet, he plays more on varieties of color, here his choice of instruments is homogeneous in the first three parts (out of four) of the composition: four pairs of tuned bongos in Part I, three marimbas and female voices in Part II, three glockenspiels with whistling and piccolo flute in Part I, and all combined in Part IV. It is striking, and evidently intentional, that Reich's timbral choices should stage an elevation from low to high registers, from the muffled-sounding skins of the bongos to the tinkling glockenspiels.
The bongos in Part I generate a relatively bland timbral color - I wouldn't call it "gray", but rather "ochre brown" or "beige" (Reich says that it also involves a male voice, but I only over headphones did I occasionally hear one player's vocal "dum-dumming"). But what it offers is the huge excitement of rhythm, a ceremony in an imaginary African or Haitian village (Reich does acknowledge the African influence, a trip to Africa made in 1970 coming as a confirmation of intuitions that he harbored about mixing acoustic instruments and voices, and about percussion). Still, one may be excused for finding its 24+ minutes of beige patterns a little long and repetitive... but that's the point, I guess. There are more colors and more caressing sweetness in the marimbas and sopranos of Part II, and here, despite (or because of) the 25-minute duration, the repetition does elicit a nice, hypnotic effect. Part III is simply exquisite and enrapturing, and sounds like the music of a fairy-tale. Part IV, which mixes all three instrumental families, is colorful, entertaining and playful and stages an exciting, long-hauled crescendo.
With its softly shimmering metal instruments and its soft, slowly swaying new age wordless soprano chorus, Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ (written simultaneously with Six Pianos and completed in 1973) sounds like an offshoot of Drumming's Part II. It is sweet, pretty, easy-listening, undemanding, aiming at (and achieving) an hypnotizing effect, great for the California beaches, great to get high on, but, IMO, too much of all that to be really nourishing. But if Six Pianos, despite its playfulness and dynamism, gives the impression of a certain blandness, it is due not to the composition itself, but to the 1974 recording: it is somewhat muffled and the edges and colors of the piano ensemble are dulled. It took me the more recent recording by Piano Circus,
Steve Reich: Six Pianos; Terry Riley: In C
, to realize how sparkling the composition is.
This remains an indispensable document on the early days of Reich and repetitive minimalism; and the bonus is that, besides its documentary value, it provides, with Parts II-IV of Drumming, a good hour of sheer pleasure. That said, I've pulled out of my shelves the 1987 and shorter (56:45 minutes) remake that Reich did for Elektra/Nonesuch (
Drumming
). Unlike many reviewers, I find that it is a valid option and in some respects even preferable to the 1974 recording - especially given the price now demande for it. See my review for more details.
(added October 2015) For a complete discography of DG's 20th Century Classics Collection, see my review of
Holliger: Siebengesang / Der magische Tänzer
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