Classical review: Reich/Currie/Glass, Royal Festival Hall
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.The penultimate weekend of the Rest Is Noise festival highlighted the best and worst of American ‘minimalism’: with a piano recital in which Andrew Zolinsky showed what spells Cage and Feldman could weave through the suggestive use of silence, and with rare personal appearances by the movement’s high priests, Steve Reich and Philip Glass.
Reich launched his concert by humbly playing secondo to Colin Currie’s lead in “Clapping Music”, after which Currie and his chamber group gave scintillating performances of three Reich classics, culminating in a magnificent account of his chef d’oeuvre, “Music for 18 musicians”. And for that the Festival Hall acoustic was perfect, allowing it to create the impression of a complex mobile gracefully turning, in which each musician played an independent and eloquent part. It was one thing and many things, simultaneously static and bursting with event: a joyful conundrum.
On the other hand, Glass delivered his four-hour “Music in Four Parts” at ear-battering volume, and nothing could disguise the poverty of its invention, pace a programme-note preposterously comparing it to Bach’s “Art of Fugue”. Glass may, like Reich, have drawn inspiration from gamelan, but whereas the real Indonesian thing is wonderfully light-footed and intricate, his mechanistic version is a coarse-grained stomp.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments