If I don't write something now I risk losing track of this special concert. That is to say, not (lose track) of its importance, but of the format, and time and place. Much of what I jot down here, raves and the odd rant, are for my memory and memories. I find myself looking back, wondering who what when and where, and am often sobered by the lost details. I wonder if I'm running out of (organic) disk space and band width.
The justly famous Steve Reich, a man who 'altered the direction of musical history' (the Guardian), was in Sydney as Composer in Residence last week. Alex Ross says it all with worthy insight and clarity. I can't and wont try to do much more than document the concert called A Celebration. I went because I needed to know about this man and his music having been woefully underexposed for too long.
Margaret Throsby's interview was a good introduction and worth a listen. "Yes, she was good" he said when we had a little chat during the second interval. I came back into the house early only to find that baseball cap sitting 'right there', as Mr R was giving himself a break from the controller mixer not-so-comfortable seats and chose, foolishly for him, a seat next to me. I had to ask if I detected some Yiddish melody in the final section of Double Sextet. "Not conscious" he said before breaking into Hebrew (I think).
From 6 on Sunday evening till 10.20 a full house of an unexpectedly young (I mean lots and lots in their twenties, and younger) was enthralled by a riveting full-on Reich night, preceded by 'The Sound of Four Hands Clapping' (my nick), with Steve Baseball Cap Reich and Synergy's Timothy Constable and followed by a spontaneous and genuine standing ovation rarely seen down here. Everyone was up, literally and figuratively.
Drumming Part 1 (1971)
Mallet Quartet (2009)
Variations For Vibes Strings Piano (2005)
Interval
Four Organs (1970)
Vermont Counterpoint (1982)
Double Sextet (2007)
Interval
Music For 18 Musicians
Murray Black's rather cool assessment of the night doesn't really reflect the visceral effect this music had on the packed house and certainly on me.
Mr Reich, now 76 if the sums are right, was very present all night after a long week, a long day, and the long night. He dutifully signed CDs at the first interval ...
and as I mentioned was at the mixer throughout the concert.
I though it all just wonderful, this music and its almost primal rhythms derived from the very beat of existence, the life force pulse we first experience as embryos, the pulse of a mother's heart beat, the regular pacifying beat of footsteps of mothers carrying babies, the clickety-clack of child train travel from west to east, seven years worth say, and I wonder about the sounds we hear "not consciously" - the pulse of the subatomic particles, the pulse of the stars, the pulse of the cosmos. This was for me the true sound of the universe.
When you have a comfortably spare hour, be still and listen to this. While I suspect it will be only an approximation of the live experience, perhaps you may get a glimpse of the timelessness and spacelessness this work achieves. It was transcendental. When I would occasionally surface to self-awareness, and wonder whether we had been listening for 5 or 50 minutes, there was no answer, not the desire for it ever to end. But it had to.
