Reich Review Part One
I’ve decided to be more expansive and provide some different angles of looking at last Saturday’s all Steve Reich concert. I just feel that it would be more interesting to read a serious of shorter more focused articles than one really long and meandering one.
This article will focus on the way the Los Angeles Philharmonic structured that concert. And I will start by saying that my chief complaint must be with the ordering of the pieces. Why do the concert programmers insist on performing the least exciting piece first? They did that on Monday’s In C concert where they began with a piece that was so minimal that to call it minimalism is a gross overstatement. It was more like infinitesmalism.
And that’s not even to say I didn’t like it or that it doesn’t have its place. In fact, I do like those pieces and they certain do have their place. But what I’m suggesting is the concerts should not begin by alienating an audience that has taken time to invest in what the concert’s tastemakers are selling. They gave this weird stuff a shot and it blew up in their faces. Here they thought they were going to watch a Brahms symphony, if they even know what that entails. At least we can provide some kind of informative pre concert lecture.
And guess what people, they do have one! I know because I went to it, but even then, they totally glossed over the concert opener in favor of discussing the famous In C by the famous Terry Riley. Terry Jennings was a footnote in the discussion.
So why program it anyways if we’re not going to talk about it or consider a major step in the evolution of minimalism? Well, it was different. But any host of things were different and could have worked to the same end. I really had a good time listening to Jennings’ strangely ritualistic string quartet, but the Walt Disney Concert Hall is full of seats. Let’s fill them.
And on Reich night, they got much more full. He is about as marquee a name in minimalism as it gets, but it still wasn’t a sell out. And what do they start the concert with: Variations for Winds, Strings, and Keyboards. Now this piece is pretty exciting and interesting. It has a pretty constant rhythm and presents a constantly changing harmony. It’s luscious and easy to like. But conductor Stefan Marbury took it at a slower tempo. That gave it the feeling of watching them rehearse the piece as if at half speed. This was confirmed with a rebellious oboe that kept hitting sour notes.
And what made it more embarrassing was that Deborah Borda, who runs the Los Angeles Philharmonic, told us beforehand that the evening was being recorded. She asked the audience to basically shut up lest we screw up her iTunes viability. Now I totally applaud putting these live performances on an internet service, but what hurt the performance was the tempo and oboe, not the audience. Now it’s left to next month, when the download service begins and we can hear whether the engineers have autotuned it to the correct pitch (maybe they could even speed up the tempo too).
What should the orchestra have played instead to start the evening? How about the next piece they played which was Reich’s Three Movements. It is rhythmically vibrant, short and sweet. All things that concert openings should be. Like a good opera overture, it gets the audience’s head in the game usually by loud and somewhat memorable thematic music that may be used later. And these pieces should be short (5-15 minutes in length) so as to not overwhelm what comes after.
The LA Phil did quite the opposite. They opened with a longer piece that was not particularly loud or climactic. Three Movements however delivers a very exciting conclusions and is built throughout as an almost symphony for dummies. And the piece is dictated by metronome markings, which give the music its names. That means length is fixed at 15 minutes.
To you at the LA Phil, please play something that will jolt the audience, not lull them to sleep or boredom. Not for my sake, but for theirs. They will thank you.
