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Bang On A Can Bang Out Three Reich Wonders

Genius ... or inspiration, or whatever, is its own end product. No matter how much the intellect tries to subvert it, negotiate with it, wrestle it into some scheme, that end product — art — speaks for itself, apart from the mere mortals who create it. For most of his career, minimalist master Steve Reich has — like so many 20th-century composers — tried to put his work into some sort of intellectual system that would give it context. Maybe it was "process." Or systems. Or various clever compositional schemes — repeating notes and chords and instrumental "breaths," etc. — to create a musical effect. But in spite of all this silliness, Reich has made wonderful, wondrous music.

Three of those works can be heard on this CD, performed by the intrepid modern ensemble Bang on a Can. New York Counterpoint draws from nine B-flat clarinets and three bass clarinets, a densely simple soundscape that is almost programmatic in its evocation of the city that bears its title. The movement of notes and the layers of harmony become patterns of skyscraping elegance intersected by intricate lines that stretch as far as the ear can hear. Is this piece "about" New York? Probably not. But it is anyway, in some indefinable, infallible way.

Similarly, Eight Lines (Octet) and Four Organs unfold in their textural, phasing sort of way. The latter, a watershed in minimalism and American musical history, drones, shakes and wanders in pointillistic wonder, quite apart from and above its theoretical constructions. It is Mondrian set to music, a piece whose richness and power seem to pulse and glow from compact structures of sound. The end product of this CD is a set of three pieces that move gracefully and glacially with the grandeur of frozen Bach (who had a "system" or two of his own).

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