Steve Reich – Different Trains – Smith Quartet

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Classical music review, Different Trains, Minimalism, Reich - Duet, Reich - Triple Quartet, Smith Quartet, Steve Reich

Beauty and Terror

This is a difficult album to sit with – because of the title piece, Different Trains, which is of course a famous piece of modern music which contains the dreadful weight of our twentieth century history within it. ‘Inspired’ by an awareness of the musical and rhythmic possibilities of the sound of trains, Reich wove these train sounds, together with recorded speech, and strong music, into a 3 movement piece, America before the war, Europe During the war years, Europe after the war. The dark despair of certain train journeys in Europe is overwhelming in this piece, their destinations underscored by the voices of camp survivors woven into the last 2 movements. A horrific, horrifying piece. It IS a piece of music, but one which I find it impossible to relate to in terms of musical interpretation. It is a piece which had to be written, given events, but should NEVER have had to be written, at least the last 2 movements, hence the unbearableness of this piece.

I am grateful for the ordering of the pieces in this. I have a version Different Trains / Electric Counterpoint with Pat Methany, and have to say I cannot listen to anything after Different Trains itself, as I am too overwhelmed. It seems equally impossible, disrespectful, to ignore DT and just play Electric Counterpoint.

On this disc, I can come to DT after the experience of the very very beautiful Triple Quartet, and Duet. Music which is edgy, driving, containing that sense of movement and journey – indeed, it hints, inexorably at the Different Trains which darkly await, but I can be moved by the strange beauty of the dissonance of these cross rhythms, arising lyrical lines which weave through close, jarring harmonic. ‘Triple Quartet’ is so called because the quartet either accompanies itself, having prerecorded, twice, itself playing the music, if it happens ‘live’ or has 3 quartets playing together. Triple Quartet Duet – duetting violins and doubled viola and cello duets is lyrical, sweet, and warm, dedicated by Reich to, and inspired by, Yehudi Menuhin for his humanitarian works

I have recently discovered the Smith Quartet. I am enamoured.

Tracks are: Triple Quartet;Duet:Different Trains
Steve Reich – Different Trains – Smith Quartet Amazon UK
Steve Reich – Different Trains – Smith Quartet Amazon USA

Jocelyn Pook – Untold Things

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Jocelyn Pook, Music review, Soundtrack, Untold Things, World music

Frankly weird, a mash-up, but definitely haunting

I had never heard of Jocelyn Pook, till a friend sent me a link to a YouTube video of a piece of `sacred style’ Western choral singing composed by her, very much in Early Music polyphony mode (which I love)

Alas, this was a while ago and I can no longer find that particular clip

However I also love the strange atonal, dissonant singing and ululations of Arabic music. And it turns out that Ms Pook, best known for film and TV sound tracks, (Eyes Wide Shut, by all accounts propelled her to a wider audience) works with a fusion of Western classical, and strands of world music which clearly pull in threads from the Balkans, the Middle East, India, and she also incorporates more modern, electronic techniques – reverb, sampled sounds. And then there is a rich and sumptuous vein of high romantic and lyrical use of Western classical strings, lush and emotional.

And, on this particular album  some up-beat, tabla driven rhythmic numbers, which invite the listener to groove, move and sway

This shouldn’t really work, somehow it does! Personally I found the more dance upbeat numbers were not quite as alluring as the other tracks, missing the stranger, more unusual quality of the other, intensely emotional tracks.

The YouTube embed is of Requiem aeternam, a track from another Pook album Flood
Untold Things Amazon UK
Untold Things Amazon USA