Steve Reich: The Four Sections / Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices & Organ

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Steve Reich's music is based around the phase shifting of percussion instruments. Even when he uses a larger ensemble--or a whole orchestra--you can still make out the percussion underneath. It's always there. In The Four Sections he takes a simple theme on the strings, then punctuates the flow with precise, percussive effects. It is very engaging music, some of the best this composer has written. Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ is a tour de force. Once again the percussion rules. Here the organ and voices provide the undercarriage for all sorts of wondrous mallet instruments to flow over the top. --Paul Cook

Tracks:

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

Tracks:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Tracks:

Music For Mallet Instruments, Voices And Organ
Clapping Music
Six Marimbas

Tracks:

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

Tracks:

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'
City Life: Heartbeats - Boats & Buoys
City Life: 'Heavy Smoke'

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.

Steve Reich: The Four Sections / Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices & Organ
Average customer rating:

An audience-pleaser

EXTREMELY MOVING

Not his best

It is very Interesting But It Definatly Grows on you

Steve Reich: The Four Sections / Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices & Organ
Michael Tilson Thomas , Bob Becker , Russ Hartenberger , Garry Kvistad , Edmund Niemann , James Preiss , Pamela Wood Ambush , Rebecca Armstrong , Jay Clayton , Timothy Ferchen , and London Symphony Orchestra
Manufacturer: Nonesuch
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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Reich: Different Trains, Electric Counterpoint / Kronos Quartet, Pat Metheny

Reich: Triple Quartet, Music for a Large Ensemble, Electric Guitar Phase

ASIN: B000005IZS
Release Date: 1990-09-24

Tracks:

The Four Sections: Strings (With Winds And Brass)
The Four Sections: Percussion
The Four Sections: Winds and Brass (with Strings)
The Four Sections: Full Orchestra
Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices And Organ

Amazon.com

Steve Reich's music is based around the phase shifting of percussion instruments. Even when he uses a larger ensemble--or a whole orchestra--you can still make out the percussion underneath. It's always there. In The Four Sections he takes a simple theme on the strings, then punctuates the flow with precise, percussive effects. It is very engaging music, some of the best this composer has written. Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ is a tour de force. Once again the percussion rules. Here the organ and voices provide the undercarriage for all sorts of wondrous mallet instruments to flow over the top. --Paul Cook

Customer Reviews:

An audience-pleaser.......2001-01-16

A CD intended as an audience-pleaser. Both pieces are Steve Reich saying "Thank you" to his fans & trying to win over a few more, while also advancing his ideas. Four Sections was composed for Michael Tilson Thomas, so this performace will always be the root definitive. That the London Symphony Orchestra performed it so beautifully, as part of a Reich retrospective in 1988 was also a statement.

Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices & Organ (1973), composed for Reich's own popular ensemble, casts an exotic spell; African drumming through the sort of gamelan some imaginary Pythagoreans might have played if they had those kinds of bands. Wonderful, delicate music.

In both works the changes happen fast enough & the music is over almost before you can say "minimalism."

EXTREMELY MOVING.......2000-04-04

It is state of the art avante-garde classical music. The first four tracks, (The Four Sections) were written for orchestra. They are not in the traditional Steven Reich instrumentation, i,e, mallets and percussion, but they are super modern, highly emotionally charged pieces that are my favorites by this composer.

Not his best.......1999-11-28

This CD is a mixed bag. FOUR SECTIONS is Reich's least sucessfull piece. The orchestral writing is uninspired. On the other hand, the Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ - represents the composer at his best. Recorded sound on the latter work is super.

It is very Interesting But It Definatly Grows on you.......1998-12-04

In 1998 The Westerville North Marching Band played The Four Sections for Bands of America contests across the US. None of us liked it at first it was too weird, If you listen to it and appreciate what Steve Reich is trying to do here It is a wonderful Masterpiece. If you don't appreciate what he is trying to di It will Grow on you I promise.

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