Reich, Steve: Runner/Music for Ensemble & Orchestra LP

Nonesuch Records releases the first recordings of Steve Reich's" Runner" (2016) and "Music for Ensemble and Orchestra" (2018), performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and conducted by Susanna Mälkki. The New York Times calls "Runner," "a calmly luminous orchestral piece with the pulsating, propulsive rhythms that animate much of Mr. Reich's music." The San Francisco Chronicle says that "Music for Ensemble and Orchestra," "is a beautiful and dramatically charged masterpiece, but its impact goes even further than that."

Reich says "Runner" is written "for a large ensemble of winds, percussion, pianos, and strings. While the tempo remains more or less constant, there are five movements, played without pause, that are based on different note durations. First, even sixteenths, then irregularly accented eighths, then a very slowed-down version of the standard bell pattern from Ghana in quarters, fourth a return to the irregularly accented eighths, and finally a return to the sixteenths but now played as pulses by the winds for as long as a breath will comfortably sustain them. The title was suggested by the rapid opening and my awareness that, like a runner, I would have to pace the piece to reach a successful conclusion."

"Music for Ensemble and Orchestra is an extension of the Baroque concerto grosso where there is more than one soloist," the composer continues. "Here there are twenty soloists – all regular members of the orchestra, including the first stand strings and winds, as well as two vibraphones and two pianos. The piece is in five movements, though the tempo never changes, only the note value of the constant pulse in the pianos. Thus, an arch form: sixteenths, eighths, quarters, eighths, sixteenths. Music for Ensemble and Orchestra is modeled on my Runner, which has the same five movement form."