The Evolution of Steve Reich

Steve Reich Phases: A Nonesuch Retrospective. (Nonesuch 79962-2)

You know those composer anniversaries that the classical music world seems to love observing? Well, they prove their worth when it comes to generating new recordings that last well past the actual banner year. Take the case of Steve Reich, who studied composition at Juilliard from 1959-61, and whose 70th birthday on October 3 was celebrated with major retrospectives in New York, London, and elsewhere around the globe. Nonesuch took the occasion to release Phases: A Nonesuch Retrospective, a career-spanning, five-CD compilation of music by the composer. While Reich fans undoubtedly own most of these recordings already, for listeners who do not, it's an ideal introduction (and at about $35, much more affordably priced than the voluminous Works: 1965-1995, a 10-CD set the label released a decade ago).

Included are 14 of Reich's seminal works dating back to the experimental tape loop piece Come Out (1966), the rhythmically enthralling Drumming (1971), and the monumental Music for 18 Musicians (1976), many performed by Reich and his own ensemble. The set traces Reich's evolution in several key areas. His interest in Jewish culture is featured in Tehillim, a 1981 work built on Reich's studies of traditional Jewish cantillation, and You Are (Variations), a 2004 piece featuring texts drawn from the philosophical mediations of an 18th-century Hasidic mystic. Different Trains (1988), a groundbreaking and harrowing piece using speech tape loops (with the voices of American Pullman car porters and European Holocaust survivors) and live string quartet (the Kronos, which premiered the work), is included, as are three of Reich's "counterpoint" works: New York Counterpoint (1985), Electric Counterpoint (1987), and Cello Counterpoint (2003), each of which calls for a soloist to play along with a recording of him- or herself (missing is the 1982 Vermont Counterpoint, for flutes).

The set also allows one to hear how Reich's style has gotten freer and more nuanced while his subjects have become more philosophical over the past four decades. Compare the relatively austere Drumming or Eight Lines (1979) to the sonically rich You Are (Variations) and that evolution is especially unmistakable.



Han-Na Chang Plays Shostakovich

Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 1, Cello Sonata. Han-Na Chang, cello; London Symphony Orchestra, Antonio Pappano, conductor and piano. (EMI Classics 32422-2)

One of the best new CDs released for the 100th anniversary of Shostakovich's birth this year is this one by Han-Na Chang, a young Korean-American cellist who studied in Juilliard's Pre-College Division with Aldo Parisot during the mid 1990s. Now enrolled at Harvard University and an active soloist, she gives her take on two very different works for her instrument on this disc with the London Symphony Orchestra and conductor and pianist Antonio Pappano.

Just as Reich could make very distinctive melodies out of patterns of speech (a technique used to great effect in Different Trains), Shostakovich embedded all sorts of coded references in the first movement of his Cello Concerto No. 1. With biting wit, he not only weaves in an autobiographical four-note motif (D-S-C-H), but also an allusion to Stalin's favorite song, and what some scholars suggest is a quasi-Jewish melody—an oblique condemnation of Soviet anti-Semitism. Chang plays it with vigor and precision, filling the melodies a grand sweep and a pure, rounded tone. Similarly, she brings a feverish concentration to the six-minute solo cadenza and plenty of sting to the caustic finale.

The Cello Sonata is a smaller, more conservative work that was composed in 1934, just prior to Shostakovich's censure by Soviet authorities. Although the piece has some dark moments, Chang and Pappano are especially at the top of their game in the boisterous second movement with its galloping rhythms and quirky harmonic twists. We're reminded that while there have been several major advocates for Shostakovich's cello works—including two of Chang's teachers, Mstislav Rostropovich and Mischa Maisky—her burnished tone and intelligent playing make this disc highly competitive.

Mention this column at the Juilliard Bookstore to receive a 5-percent discount on this month's featured recordings. (In-store purchases only.)

Brian Wise is a producer at WNYC radio and writes about music for The New York Times, Time Out New York, Opera News, and other publications.