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| Reich: Drumming, Six Pianos, Music for Mallet Instruments | 
 enlarge | Artist: Steve Reich
Label: Polygram Records
Category: Music
Buy New: $455.45
Buy New/Used from $13.93
Avg. Customer Rating:  (17 reviews)
Sales Rank: 200799
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 2
UPC: 028942742826
EAN: 0028942742826
ASIN: B000026D3A
Release Date: July 21, 1989
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Amazing, absolutely amazing December 19, 2005
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
I could blather on about this album for a good while and since the other reviewers take you into a more in depth analysis of such an extraordinary album I'll just say this venture into minimalism is incredibly relaxing. While listening to it subconciously you seem to pick out tunes even when it sounds to be incredibly cluttered. Gradually if you're still listening by the time you pop the second CD, it becomes less aggressive, less cluttered and more peaceful, calming, tranquil and then picks the pace up yet again but still sound somewhat slightly different all the time. It's a sheer masterclass of beauty. I hate using words like that normally because it usually makes you sound like a pompous fool but this however deserves the term. It's quite simply astonishing and if you feel overly frustrated or exhausted with your life, this could prove to be the perfect tonic for those with an open mind towards music. It's a pure aural pleasure. Surrender subconsciously and the rewards are great!
like dying and going to Heaven November 2, 2005
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
at least if you can hear it live, which I did at BAM in the early 80s; but even if you can't, the recording still provides something of the eerie visceral sensation that accompanies immersion in a tide of interlacing percussion shifting from the lower to the higher pitches, such that at the beginning you can FEEL the sound somewhere around you solar plexus (at the live performance, I was astonished to feel my large leather handbag vibrating sympathetically as if it were a tuned drum), then progressing gradually up (inside!) your chest, throat, and into your skull-case, until the sound seems to rise into the air right off the top of your head. All along you hear it in your ears as well, enchanted by the sheer "color" of the instruments' endlessly shifting, overlapping patterns. The effect is visual, too, as if one could hear the everchanging symmetries in the viewchamber of a kaleidoscope, but unfurling as a series over a long arc of time. It's BEAUTIFUL.
 Minimalism at its worst, Reich has done better elsewhere May 10, 2005
23 out of 36 found this review helpful
DRUMMING is Steve Reich's longest work, two full discs of minimalist rhythms performed by an occasionally changing ensemble. This installment in Deutsche Grammophon's "Echo 20/21" series of contemporary music reissues provides a rare complete performance of the work with no cuts, recorded in 1974. In the end, I found "Drumming" to be minimalism at its worst.
During the late 1960s Steve Reich had worked in a studio for electronic music. In 1970 he visited Ghana, and there found confirmation of his suspicion that acoustic instrumentation contained all the possibilities of music by itself. Stylistically "Drumming" is a continuation and final refinement of the phasing technique that Reich had been working with since 1965. This is a process in which "two or three identical instruments playing the same repeating melodic pattern gradually move out of synchronization with each other." Yet, three new techniques are here. The first is that the timbre gradually changes while pitch and rhythm remain constant. The second is that the human voice is used to imitate the exact sound of the surrounding instruments in the ensemble. This has an effect similar to Ligeti's "Clocks and Clouds"). Since the glockenspiels are too high for the human voice to mimic, whistling accompanies the lower registers of the instrument, and a piccolo the higher. The third innovation is the process of substituting beats for rest or vice versa within a repetetive rhythmic cycle. Though there is development of the theme, there is yet only one basic rhythmic pattern for entire two discs of the work.
The ensemble is a showcase of early 1970s avant-garde performers. Cornelius Cardew, who went on to become England's first Maoist composer, plays marimba's here. I think that a similar section of Cardew's work "The Great Learning" (also in "Echo 20/21") is much, much more successful than "Drumming" and encourage all to check it out.
I admit it, I think minimalism is the greatest disaster to befall contemporary music, and has provided more charlatans than any other style. I prefer the zahlenmystik of Gubaidulina, the frenetic business of Lindberg, or even the academic dryness of the lab coat-wearing composer Boulez. Yet, I can appreciate some works of Reich. The other Reich disc in the Echo 21/21, with his "Variations for Winds, Strings, and Keyboards", "Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices, and Organ", and "Six Pianos" is quite enjoyable. "Drumming", on the other hand, is so dull that I felt no compulsion to return to it except the curiosity to know if there was something in there after all. Yet, after many listenings, I find that the work is still without any captivating qualities. The development of the music seems to take longer than in any other minimalist work, and two hours of music have a range so limited that you won't believe you just paid so much for this release.
I really cannot recommend this disc to anyone except those who, like me, are collecting all of the "Echo 20/21" series, or those who want to fill holes in their Reich collection. I was greatly disappointed by "Drumming".
The Masterpiece of Minimalism October 8, 2004
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
If you are going to own only one Reich recording, this is the one to own. "Drumming" is a defining moment in both American and 20th century music. With it, Reich successfully took his earlier work with tape compositions that moved "in and out of phase" into the realm of live human performance. Based on a short, simple, repetitive rhythmic pattern, the music ventures through various "shifts" as the musicians move in and out of time with each other. The result is that from one short rhythmic motif, longer and more intricate phrases are created and woven together to create a more complex music out of minimalist means. The resulting music bears a resemblance to both Indian ragas and Balinese Gamelan music in the way these longer phrases/rhythmic patterns expand and contract. Rather than being redundant, the music is hypnotic, drawing the listener in.
This Deutsch Grammophon recording restores a long sought after nearly 85 minute version that has been long out of print. Recorded in 1974, a few years after the composition was written, there is an energy and freshness to the performance. Perhaps what sets this above all other recorded versions is that Reich himself both performs with, and supervises his hand picked musicians, making this the "director's cut" of his minimalist masterpiece.
 Sound quality issues August 29, 2004
I agree with other reviewers on the music. Be aware that, IMHO, the sound quality on the other tracks besides Drumming is not optiomal. I hear real tape hiss on Six Pianos. Music for Mallets... is available on a nice recording with The Four Sections and the recording is not that different than this. Also, LPs of this original recording can be had on ebay for around $25.
Look for alternative modern recording of Drumming by Symergy that is a fast, but very accurate INHO, recording of the classic piece without extremely close mic'ing, which I think has not helped the aural soundscape of Reich's peices. Many more modern recordings have moved farther and farther away from the sound in live performance and have lost the spirit of these pieces.
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