SCO: Steve Reich+
City Halls, Glasgow, 7/11/25
Scottish Chamber Orchestra; Colin Currie (director/percussion)
Exploring less familiar soundworlds and challenging preconceptions of repertoire standards is the stuff of the ‘New Dimensions’ concerts presented from time to time by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Glasgow’s City Halls were the venue for the second of two opportunities to catch a programme titled ‘Steve Reich+’ featuring music by the pioneering American minimalist and two UK composers influenced by him. Superstar Scottish percussionist, Colin Currie, was the soloist and he directed the ensemble in English composer Joe Duddell’s ‘Snowblind’ (2001). He then introduced and conducted the rest of the programme, comprising the UK premiere of Helen Grime’s 2023 piece ‘River’, followed after the interval by two Steve Reich works, ‘Runner’ from 2016 and ‘Double Sextet’ from 2007. Attendance was very satisfactory.
Back in 1980, while I was still at university, on a whim of curiosity, I borrowed the LP album of ‘Glassworks’, a set of 6 pieces by American minimalist Philip Glass performed by his ensemble, from the record section of UCD Library. I was captivated by the music and immediately inoculated against anti-minimalist prejudice. Not to suggest that I would approach any such music uncritically, and I have had experiences both memorably good and memorably bad with it, but it gets a chance. Not so my father. His introduction to minimalism was Steve Reich’s early forays into the genre, to which he developed a reaction most accurately described as visceral loathing. Thereafter, any mention of minimalism tended to trigger a tirade of choice Hiberno-English invective and copious ‘mention’ of Steve Reich’s name, but not fondly. Chacun a son goût.
Joe Duddell’s ‘Snowblind’ was written specifically for Colin Currie as soloist, playing marimba, vibraphone and crotales, with a handful of small untuned percussion instruments for additional colour. It is scored for solo percussionist and strings and has a very neo-classical feel, tonal and tuneful with dialogue between soli and ripieni rather than concertante writing, in 3 movements. The first movement, a brisk Vivace, exploits the lovely bubbly liquid sound of the marimba, with canonical elements and occasionally dialogue with violin, viola and cello solos. The slow movement had a very atmospheric, nocturnal serenade feel, with lovely harmonics and sonorities in the strings and mood music on crotales at first, then vibraphone and finally marimba, faster and canonical, before a dreamy shimmering coda. After a short introduction, the energetic episodic finale begins with a playful pursuit with pauses in concealment. The vibraphone is the star of the exuberant closing pages. ‘Snowblind’ is a virtuosic life-affirming tour-de-force. It received an outing that held the attention and lifted the mood. The composer was present in the balcony and rose, at Colin’s invitation, to acknowledge the enthusiastic applause. He will not have been visible to those in the stalls.
A composer raised and educated in Scotland, Helen Grime’s music continues to enjoy a high degree of popularity and programmed visibility among the various performing ensembles in Scotland, especially the SCO. ‘River’ is in two movements for full orchestra and traces the course of a great river, from a spring to the sea. Because the piece was to be premiered by the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg, Helen had the mighty Elbe in mind. Thinking of another piece tracing a river course, I thought of the evergreen ‘Vltava’ from Smetana’s ‘Ma vlast’ and checked up on a hunch, which proved correct. The Vltava is indeed a tributary of the Elbe. Just like the Smetana (although a different soundworld) Helen’s spring is represented by the rippling liquid song of two flutes. The rest of the winds and flourishes from horns and trumpets evoke the growth into a substantial flow with wavelets and ripples on the surface, a sort of perpetuum mobile. Even in the early stages, some hints of depth and momentum are provided by the timpani and double basses. The second movement is more nocturnal in feel, perhaps suggesting the unstoppable deep, wide river flowing through a city. Muted trumpets and horns, timpani glissandi, taps on the tam-tam and a whole range of textural effects sustain the impression of understated power, concluding suddenly. Super piece, with Colin and the SCO displaying considerable skills in sonic picture-painting.
Steve Reich’s ‘Runner’ has 5 short “movements” played without a break, each unmistakably ‘minimalist’, but without the stark repetitive austerity of his early works that so enraged my father. Each of the sections has its own melodic and rhythmic germs, with variety that stems from syncopation and canonical layering. Variety in the constant tempo stems from changes in the principal note duration values of germs, the 5 movements cycling through sixteenths, eighths, quarters, eighths and sixteenths (American for crotchets, quavers, semiquavers etc.), perhaps suggestive of a distance runner pacing themselves in accordance with the conditions. The result is, frankly, mesmerising. Performed with skill and persuasive advocacy.
In ‘Runner’, the larger ensemble was arranged symmetrically, though it was not immediately obvious (to me, at any rate) that it was necessarily two antiphonal ensembles. No such ambiguity with ‘Double Sextet’. Each sextet is composed of piano, vibraphone, flute, clarinet, violin and cello, arranged symmetrically on stage. There are three movements, played without a break, each with two contrasting elements. The first movement begins fast and syncopated, with irregular metre, energetic and driven with startling key changes, both consonant and discordant. The contrasting element is a strange gnomic figure that interrupts. The second movement is slower, very neo-classical in feel and rather like a sarabande. It’s contrasting element is rather elegiac and gnomic. The finale is like the first movement, fast, syncopated and quite jazzy with irregular metre, with a gnomic interrupting static figure. Entrancing and rather disorienting, but really quite exciting.
Whether already numbered among the faithful, or proselytised by the SCO’s phenomenally cogent performance, the audience was clearly mega-impressed. As was I. If minimalism grew as a reaction to the complexity of modernism, its finest examples could hardly be described as ‘simple’. Constantly changing metre with displaced accents performed at speed must be fiendishly difficult. Colin and the SCO made it look and sound natural, unforced and easy. Mindblowing!
Photo credit: Andy Catlin