ConcertPulse
Steve Reich
Elbphilharmonie, Kleiner Saal (Hamburg)
At the time when he established minimal music, he was in his late twenties. Now, he is 87 years old: Steve Reich, according to the New York Times »one of the greatest living composers« and according to the New Yorker the »most original musical thinker of our time«. The ensemble unitedberlin led by Austrian conductor and composer Christoph Breidler presents no less than three of his works, which emerged between 2007 and 2019 – for one of them, there is a film which plays with colours and shapes. For his five-movement piece »Radio Rewrite«, Reich was inspired by two songs by the rock band Radiohead: from »Everything in Its Right Place« and »Jigsaw Falling into Place«, he made avant-garde music and wrote a new piece »for an ensemble of musicians who play non-rock instruments« with harmonious and melodic fragments. His colourful »Double Sextet« follows, for which Reich received the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2009. It can be performed with two identical sextets or with six musicians who play along with their own recording. Inspired by Gerhard Richter’s famous strip paintings, the old master of minimal music returns in »Reich/Richter« to play with small motif cells. You can experience this piece in combination with the film »Moving Picture« by video artist Corinna Belz, who created a whirring world of shapes and colours in moving image from photos of Richter’s cropped pictures.