Royal Festival Hall, London
10 November 2013
A full performance of the Music for 18 Musicians. From here.
The appealing, popular yet mysterious offspring of dada. How does this work?
This was the second concert of two devoted to the masters of
1970s minimalism. For my observations on minimalism generally, read the first review.
Critics tend to prefer high-minded Steve Reich to the more
commercial and popular Philip Glass, but if we’re comparing their central works
during the 1970s ‘pure’ phase of minimalism, I’m not sure the difference is so
great.
Music for 18 Musicians is no more audience-demanding as
Glass’ Music in Twelve Parts, and the effect is similar. The visual aspect,
with musicians wandering around to various instruments, is apparently
intentional, and it helpfully provides interest during this intense work. But
as with Glass’ music, all other aspects of the performance – melody, harmony,
tone colour, volume, tempo – varies only gradually.
You could argue that the 18 musicians are more actively involved
in this conductorless work than in Glass’, but the similarities with the more
decentralised musicmaking of jazz don’t seem so very great. Each musician is
effectively a repetitive cog in the machine.
Reich’s piece is much colder, more percussive than Glass’, more
open about its Gamelan inspirations. It is also, like Music in Twelve Parts, somehow immune to criticism, at least to mine. I simply haven't heard them often enough to notice significant alterations, or even to have significant views on a performance.
All I can note is that I can't pay the same attention to this music as I can with say, a similarly long-spanned Bruckner symphony.
Some short experimental pieces set the scene. Though slight,
all were interesting, and made the links between minimalism and dada
explicit. That even ‘pure’ minimalism is
popular, as heard in these two concerts, should not mislead us over its
revolutionary approach to music.
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