The Most Beautiful Sounds Next to Silence

This new release from Ensemble Modern is the latest of a number of single composer ‘portraits’ recorded in co-production with Hessische Rundfunk and successfully released on a number of different major record labels, most notably RCA and Sony. It presents an attractive and eloquent account of Music for 18 Musicians that could be wholeheartedly recommended on its own terms. However, it also faces stiff competition from two recordings made by the composer himself. Comparison between all three interpretations is revealing, not least for the light each throws on the piece.
Steve Reich’s first recording of Music for 18 Musicians dates from 1978 and was a landmark release in the history of new music on record. The recording was actually produced by Rudolf Werner for DG, following the release of a three-LP set of Drumming, Six Pianos and Music for Mallet Instruments, Voice and Organ. Legend has it that Roland Kommerell, at that time head of German PolyGram, foresaw the commercial potential of Reich’s piece but realized that DG was not the best vehicle to market the recording.
Kommerell therefore offered the recording instead to Manfred Eicher of ECM, a company which had hitherto only released jazz and rock. The ECM release sold well over 100,000 copies, around ten times higher than might be expected of a new music disc. This episode changed the nature of ECM and signalled a new approach to marketing new music that has since been taken up by other companies.
The 1978 recording still sounds beguilingly fresh and, although it is two minutes shorter, is clearly the model for Bradley Lubman’s interpretation of the piece. When Steve Reich and Musicians came to re-record Music for 18 Musicians for Nonesuch’s ten-CD box set in 1996, their performance was amazingly 11 minutes longer than the ECM version. Normally, you would expect such a big difference to come from a slower tempo, but in fact the underlying pulse of both recordings is virtually identical. This is because of the unusual structure of Music for 18 Musicians, where the gradual fading-in and fading-out of different elements are not given a fixed number of repetitions but are played simply as long as it takes for this process to happen. In the 1996 version, these fade-ins and fade-outs are more finely graded and require more repetitions than in the 1978 version.
The Nonesuch version is also significantly different in its production values. Whereas the ECM mix seems much as you would expect it in a live performance, Nonesuch’s producer, Judith Sharman, is far more interventionist in her approach. You get the impression sometimes that each track could have been overdubbed as in a pop production. The various textural elements are layered and blended to create a wall of sound. This may not be to everyone’s taste but it has undoubted advantages – a warm and full sound, finely judged fade-ins and fade-outs and perfectly balanced textures. It is this impressive control that enables the piece to sustain such a long span.
While the ECM interpretation treats the whole structure as an organic whole, the Nonesuch recording, although it contains many of the same personnel as 1978, is less light of touch and tries to create stronger contrasts between the individual sections. The dancing objectivity of the ECM version is replaced in the later recording by a more earthy ‘groove’, particularly in the piano riffs of sections 3 and 10. The highlight of the new recording comes in the atmosphere of absolute stillness in sections 5 and 12, an imaginative idea attempted by neither of the other recordings.
The Ensemble Modern/RCA recording does not offer such a radically new interpretation as the Nonesuch version. Its recorded sound is also more transparent than the other two versions. Here, clarity of means and ends is the order of the day. The instruments are so clearly separated in the mix that you can really hear how phasing effects between instruments are set up. You notice more specific detail here than in any other recording and you feel the piece is actually changing more quickly than in the other two versions, although this, factually speaking, can’t be true.
Symptomatic of this approach is the extreme foreground placing of the vibraphone throughout in places where it hardly features in the other two recordings. The vibraphone signals the beginning of each section and this version really means you to hear it, although in musical terms it perhaps doesn’t really justify this level of exposure.
The feeling that Ensemble Modern may be sometimes too didactic in its approach is compounded by a recorded sound which lacks depth and warmth. Its very transparency also exposes irritating flaws in the production – a rather hasty change of tempo around 13'40'' (an ill-advised edit?); anomalously out-of-tune sopranos at 42'10'' (an attack of Doppler effect?); a hard edit at 44'05'', followed by uncomfortable clarinet phrasing around 46'00''; and, above all, the unsatisfactory diminuendo of the violin at the very end, which could so easily have been remedied by one more take.
It’s been a joy to hear all three versions next to each other and confirm what a towering masterpiece Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians is. To make a choice is invidious, but here are some thoughts. If you have a good hi-fi system with a warm sound, any one of the three recordings could become a cherished companion taken on its own terms. On a more analytical system, the Ensemble Modern recording has a tendency to sound too clinical and the Nonesuch recording can sound flat and diffuse, as if it had been monitored only on headphones. The ECM recording fared best on all the hi-fi systems I tested.
Only the 1996 Steve Reich recording has track indexing so that you can trace the beginning of each section. As a result, to really get to know the piece and how it works, this is one version you should definitely familiarize yourself with. RCA has really missed a trick here, for without track indexing the Ensemble Modern recording has no real advantage over the competition. It is very close in spirit to the 1978 ECM recording but, although its high energy may appeal to some people, it is marginally less glowing and euphonious in effect.
Steve Reich’s 1996 recording presents a fascinating new approach to the piece. It is available as part of a ten-CD box but, according to Warner, was also made available separately last year although I must admit I have not been able to trace this release either in shops or record catalogues. A remix of the Nonesuch recording, however, has apparently reached No. 2 in the club charts and will give this version much-needed profile.
I suspect, nevertheless, that even despite the added kudos of Nonesuch’s commercial remix, most listeners will still prefer the tighter, more direct ECM version, a recording that still retains its freshness more than 20 years after it was made.'

(https://www.gramophone.co.uk)