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Ensemble Avantgarde — Steve Reich: Phase Patterns / Pendulum Music / Piano Phase / Four Organs
(WERGO 6630-2, 1999, CD)

by Dean Suzuki, Published 1999-11-01

Steve Reich: Phase Patterns / Pendulum Music / Piano Phase / Four Organs Cover art

This recording is special for a couple of reasons: it features the first commercially released recording of "Pendulum Music" (in fact, there are three different versions herein), as well as performances by Ensemble Avantgarde, rather than Steve Reich and Musicians. Selecting works from early in Reich’s career, the music is austere, even difficult and didactic, but also revolutionary and revealing. Reich’s first mature works were almost entirely based on his “phase process” (in essence, a sliding canon or round) and the notion of the gradually unfolding process. "Phase Patterns" and "Piano Phase" both subscribe to these ideas. There are significant differences between Ensemble Avantgarde’s performances and those by Reich. "Phase Patterns" has a more polished and clean, perhaps even sterile sound in the organs. The player’s touch, however, is lighter and tends to reveal the phase process more clearly. The organs (or are they synthesizers or digital keyboards?) do not of the grungy, cheesy but distinctive sound of the Farfisa organs originally used by Reich. "Piano Phase" sounds remarkably different from Reich’s recording (actually performed by two members of Reich’s ensemble). The rhythmic relationship here seems not quite even, yielding a bouncy, almost dotted rhythm sensation that is in marked contrast with Reich’s metronomic recording. The effect here, however, is quite interesting. More demanding for the listener are the other two pieces. "Four Organs" was Reich’s most controversial piece. It consists of a gradually elongated dominant eleventh chord played on four portable electric organs over an unflagging, relentless pulse provided by maracas. In infamous performance at Carnegie Hall elicited the most vociferous response from the audience, including a woman who ran to the front the hall screaming “All right, I'll confess!” "Four Organs" sounds almost as if performed on electric accordions and the maracas have a lighter, tighter, and more delicate sound than those used on the recordings by Reich. But for Reich fanatics, the real reason to get this CD is the premiere commercial recording of "Pendulum Music." The score calls for four microphones suspended from their chords on boom stands over speakers. The four performers hold the microphones up in the air at the same height and release them simultaneously. As each microphone passes over its speaker, it causes a burst of feedback. On this recording, the feedback has been modulated to a clean, synthesizer-like tone, with each of the four microphone / speaker set-ups having its own pitch. The four swinging microphones create interlocking rhythmic-melodic patterns with each other as they slowly come to rest. Of course, the work varies significantly each time it is performed, hence the three version here which serve as interludes between the other three works on this CD.

Filed under: New releases, Issue 18, 1999 releases

Related artist(s): Steve Reich

 

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