Reich: Proverb; Nagoya Marimbas; City Life

His more recent recorded compositions such as "The Cave" and the three works on this disc-- less visceral and emotional, perhaps, but no less powerful of insight-- have been less uniformly well received. In particular, "City Life" has been marginalized by some as a found-sound exercise in banality, utilizing performance techniques that sounded dated when the piece premiered in 1995.

The reason critics need to give it another listen has little to do with the awful coincidence in Reich's climactic choice of the earlier World Trade Center bombing aftermath as a sample source. It has a lot more to do with the sobering atmosphere progressively achieved throughout the first four movements-- a precarious balance of despair and indifference, equipoise and terror. Had this music reflected the events of 2001 rather than 1993, its composer needn't have changed a note.

With almost surgical understatement, Reich distills his stylistic hallmarks-- crystalline architecture, slow-burn intensity, razor-sharp asentimentality, and inexhaustable rhythmic drive-- into a musical observation of urban rage, unsparingly linking individual discontent to mass destruction.

No sides are taken here. Often skeptical of a composer's entitlement to expression for its own sake, Reich has always despised and successfully avoided musical agitprop. And just as he has from "Come Out" to "Different Trains," in "City Life" he provides something better, something more necessary: an indelible reflection of the ghost face of violence at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Perhaps if one tenth of the people rushing to purchase Lee Greenwood's "American Patriot" listened carefully to Reich's "City Life," there might be a measurably clearer consciousness of what has changed life in the United States, and the resentments and complacencies that have fueled those changes.

"Proverb" is a very interesting, mellow piece with a single lyric: "How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life." This piece recalls the medieval forms such as the organum--but with rhythms and dissonances that the ancients would have never dared explore. The lyric itself seems to be a statement of the principles of minimalism...something upon which the listener is compelled to meditate during the course of this piece. "Nagoya Marimbas", while not the most striking statement is a very interesting study of patterns--the changes are subtle and occur just in time to prevent the piece from becoming monotonous. I imagine that to play this piece would require great concentration on the part of each player, to stay with their individual contribution to it.

By far, "City Life" is the most compelling piece, and the one I initially bought this CD for. The use of sampled sounds, combined with the textures of the music itself, truly evokes the image of New York City, from the frenzied rush of cars in the first movement to the brooding ambience of the harbor, and finally, the potential for disaster reflected in the last movement. I bought this CD in the fall of 2001, and it was quite chilling to realize that the recordings Mr. Reich used in the last movement were from the *first* World Trade Center bombing...but it could just as easily fit the more recent tragedy.