Steve Reich (b. 1936)
Different Trains / Electric Counterpoint / Three Movements
Kronos Quartet
Pat Metheny, electric guitar
London Symphony Orchestra
Michael Tilson Thomas
Different Trains was composed by Reich for the Kronos Quartet, and it is a reflection on how different his life could've turned out if he had only been born in Europe. Being Jewish, he sees now that instead of traveling from SF to NY as a child, he would've been in a very different train had he been born in Europe. The work makes use of a technique that has come to be a trademark of Reich, which is to notate musically pre-recorded spoken excerpts. The excerpts come from interviews with Jewish people and with people Reich knew, who talk about subjects from the trains themselves, to Europe and American before and after WWII. A thoroughly gripping work, and its intense rhythmic drive is pure Reich, especially foretelling the rhythmic intensity of later works like Double Sextet and 2x5.
Electric Counterpoint is a work for electric guitar and tape that Reich wrote for jazz guitarist Pat Metheny. Building dense layers of polyphonic textures in the tape, the live guitarist and the listener becomes enveloped in an amazing soundscape, which goes from pulsating harmonies, very much a la Music for 18 Musicians, in the first movement, to a funky, bass-driven counterpoint texture in the third movement.
The disc doesn't originally include the Three Movements for Orchestra, but I've included them, as the corresponding disc on the Steve Reich 1965-1995 box set does, in a great interpretation by the LSO with Michael Tilson Thomas conducting.
