Sextet/Six Marimbas

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
These pieces, written more than a decade apart, show the changes that occurred in Reich's music. Six Marimbas is a re-scoring of Reich's Six Pianos (1973), one of his most mechanically oriented pieces. The continuing rhythms are quite exhilarating, but some listeners find this music monotonous. I don't, but even I prefer the Sextet from 1985, which has more harmonic movement than Reich's earlier works. In either case, the music will appeal mostly to those who like rhythmically oriented percussion music, here composed by its greatest master. For many of us, Reich transcends the "minimalist" label and writes real music of lasting value. Try some. --Leslie Gerber

Tracks:

Sextet: 1st Movement
Sextet: 2nd Movement
Sextet: 3rd Movement
Sextet: 4th Movement
Sextet: 5th Movement
Six Marimbas

Amazon.com

These pieces, written more than a decade apart, show the changes that occurred in Reich's music. Six Marimbas is a re-scoring of Reich's Six Pianos (1973), one of his most mechanically oriented pieces. The continuing rhythms are quite exhilarating, but some listeners find this music monotonous. I don't, but even I prefer the Sextet from 1985, which has more harmonic movement than Reich's earlier works. In either case, the music will appeal mostly to those who like rhythmically oriented percussion music, here composed by its greatest master. For many of us, Reich transcends the "minimalist" label and writes real music of lasting value. Try some. --Leslie Gerber

Customer Reviews:

Wonderful music.......2006-06-20

I first heard this music on the BBC in a tent on the north west coast of Scotland in a freezing winter gale. But they didn't back announce it, so I had no clue what I just listened to. For years all I had was the memory of this gorgeous sound circling in my head, if you listen to it you'll understand. Eventually a percussionist/tenor/conductor friend identified it from my description and I bought it the next day. This is such a wonderful overloaded harmony I just wish there was much more music like this. There aren't many pieces of music that have ever made such an impression on me that I searched for years and remember exactly where and how I first heard it. For me Sextet is the lesser of the two pieces, but still well worth having even if it was the only thing on the disk. This is a wonderful clean clear recording, buy it!

Great CD.......2004-09-26

Great cd, two great pieces by a master of the style. I write this review to rather pedantically correct other reviewers in that it is a bowed *vibraphone*, not bowed *marimba*, used to such interesting effect in the 'Sextet', as is made clear in the liner notes.

LOVE IT!.......2003-06-14

I can't get enough of "Six Marimbas". It is so soothing, warm and inviting. I listen to it over and over. I think "Six Marimbas" is one of Reich's most beautiful works.

wonderful.......2003-03-13

Sextet is a very fun piece, with the gradually changing marimba melodies & also marimbas played with bows to get longer notes than a marimba can usually do. My favorite part of Sextet is the 3rd movement. & also, the way the 5th & final movement ends is amazing -- amazing -- it always leaves me breathless.

As for Six Marimbas, it's one of my favorite Reich pieces. A rescoring of Six Pianos. I have both versions, & the rescoring improved the piece infinitely; with marimbas, you can hear each note so well. & the way the music changes always makes you so curious to see what the next note to change will be & how.

This cd as a whole coheres so well, since the 2 different pieces that are melodically & rhythmically very different from each other are both for marimbas.

21ST CENTURY MUSIC.......2002-12-01

Quite exhilerating, stark, simple yet complex marimba musical arrangements by 20th Century (and 21st) composer Steve Reich is wonderful to even this progressive rock fan who admittedly hasn't had much exposure to this type of music. The musical nucleus of this centripetal web keeps the listener transfixed on a musical point that grows, wavers, momentarily disappears and returns with renewed intensity causing the listener to stare into the insistent sound as if by gunpoint, helplessly hypnotized and bondaged towards a finale. Rather mind boggling at times it's not recommended for in your car listening. You're liable to find yourself cruising down a road that didn't exist before you got there.

Average customer rating:

Classic, but not the definitive...
Essential

Steve Reich 1965-1995

Manufacturer: Nonesuch
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: B000005J4P
Release Date: 1997-06-03

Tracks:

Come Out
Piano Phase
It's Gonna Rain, Part I
It's Gonna Rain, Part II
Four Organs

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Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

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Music For Mallet Instruments, Voices And Organ
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Six Marimbas

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Music For 18 Musicians: Pulses
Music For 18 Musicians: Section I
Music For 18 Musicians: Section II
Music For 18 Musicians: Section IIIA
Music For 18 Musicians: Section IIIB
Music For 18 Musicians: Section IV
Music For 18 Musicians: Section V
Music For 18 Musicians: Sectionn VI
Music For 18 Musicians: Section VII
Music For 18 Musicians: Section VIII
Music For 18 Musicians: Section IX
Music For 18 Musicians: Section X
Music For 18 Musicians: Section XI
Music For 18 Musicians: Pulses

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Eight Lines
Tehillim: Part 1: Fast
Tehillim: Part 2: Fast
Tehillim: Part 3: Slow
Tehillim: Part 4: Fast

Tracks:

The Desert Music: First Movement
The Desert Music: Second Movement
The Desert Music: Third Movement, Part One
The Desert Music: Third Movement, Part Two
The Desert Music: Third Movement, Part Three
The Desert Music: Fourth Movement
The Desert Music: Fifth Movement

Tracks:

Works: New York Counterpoinnt: Fast
Works: New York Counterpoint: Slow
Works: New York Counterpoint: Fast
Works: Sextet: 1st Movement
Works: Sextet: 2nd Movement
Works: Sextet: 3rd Movement
Works: Sextet: 4th Movement
Works: Sextet: 5th Movement
Works: I. Strings
Works: II. Percussion
Works: III. Winds And Brass
Works: IV. Full Orchestra

Tracks:

Works: Different Trains - America - Before The War
Works: Different Trains - Europe - During The War
Works: Different Trains - After The War
Works: Electric Counterpoint - Fast
Works: Electric Counterpoint - Slow
Works: Electric Counterpoint - Fast
Works: Movement I
Works: Movement II
Works: Movement III

Tracks:

The Cave: Typing Music
The Cave: Who Is Abraham?
The Cave: Who Is Ishmael?
The Cave: Genesis XVIII
The Cave: Genesis XXI
The Cave: The Casting Out Of Ishmael And Hager
The Cave: Machpelah
The Cave: Genesis XXV
The Cave: Interior Of The Cave
The Cave: Surah 3
The Cave: El Khalil Commentary
The Cave: Who Is Abraham?W
The Cave: Who Is Sarah?
The Cave: Who Is Hagar?
The Cave: Who Is Ishmael?
The Cave: The Binding Of Isaac
The Cave: The Cave Of Machpelah

Tracks:

Proverb
Nagoya Marimbas
City Life: 'Check It Out'
City Life: Pile Driver - alarms
City Life: 'It's Been A Honeymoon - Can't Take No Mo'
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Amazon.com essential recording

In the afterglow of his 60th birthday in 1997, Nonesuch Records delivered Steve Reich and his listeners an immense gift, this 10-CD retrospective of his work for the label, extending from his earliest tape-manipulation pieces to his most recent compositions utilizing samplers and the video artistry of Beryl Korot. Aside from the ear's liquid sense-making when it hears the dense and limber marimbas of Reich's Six Marimbas or his taut, dizzying Piano Phase, there is a physical response almost inevitable in Reich's music. It stuns and holds you. And he knows it. It's Gonna Rain struck an early chord of inventiveness, featuring an African American Pentecostal preacher's sermon and eventually spinning the title phrase into a jangling repetition of single words. Percussion works abound here: Clapping and Drumming stun with their deceptive similarity and warm clarity. Perennial favorite Piano Phase features pianists Nurit Tilles and Eduard Neumann synched up on two pianos and careening at full tilt in unison before their four hands fall out of time and phrase with each other, only to realign in a powerful swooping demonstration of energy and focus. The latter CDs hold abundant delights, many revealing Reich's late-discovered spiritualism and Judaica: Different Trains' examination of the Holocaust; Tehillim's shimmering Hebrew texts sung with fascinating choral power; Proverb's invocation of Perotin. Closing the set are recent pieces: Nagoya Marimbas, and the sampler-rich City Life and The Cave. --Andrew Bartlett

Customer Reviews:

Classic, but not the definitive..........2004-05-20

While a multi CD collection spanning 30 years does sound very promsing, Nonesuch cannot offer all of the best recordings of some of Reich's masterpieces (Music for 18 Musicians or Drumming), and some have been missed out completely (Music for a Large Ensemble), presumably because the piece was not recorded under the Nonesuch label. While the collection is formidable, a listener wanting to hear the best recordings of all the pieces might do better seeking out the older (or longer!) recordings of the pieces.

Essential.......1999-02-24

The term "essential" gets thrown about too much. And heck, the claim that certain words get thrown about too much gets thrown about too much. But here is a collection that really *is* essential to understanding the nature of a whole shift not just in classical music, but in popular music and indeed in popular culture. So many of Reich's ideas and concepts have become so deeply embedded in current classical music, film scoring (any number of examples, but think about Tangerine Dream's score for "Risky Business" and Hans Zimmer's score for "Thin Red Line," for starters), electronic music and even the visual arts.

This box set gives the listener all of Reich's major works. I can't even attempt to describe them individually, but every one of these 10 CDs is compelling. For the totally uninitiated, take out "Music for 18 Musicians" (presented here in a crystalline new recording) to get an idea of what the core of this guy is all about. From there, you might want to listen to "Different Trains," "Electric Counterpoint" and "Six Marimbas" to get an idea of the pointillistic pulse minimalism that Reich contributed to the world. The earlier material is the more challenging, exploring the subtleties of rythym, phase relationships between sounds and shifting timings. Among these, the new recording of "Four Organs" is just outstanding.

Reich's works, along with the early works of Terry Riley and Philip Glass, form the foundation of an enormous edifice that has grown of music that attempts to return to its essential and hypnotic roots. With this box set, one of those pylons becomes clear.

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