Steve Reich revised his Different Trains in 2000, expanding the original string quartet to a full string orchestra. The result is a fuller, less strident sound than before, yet the work loses none of its immediacy as the individual lines remain remarkably clear. This is of utmost importance in music whose thematic material derives from transcribed speech, in this case the actual recordings of persons who lived through World War II. The sampled speech magically evokes that particular era, just as Reich’s hypnotically driving music creates a sense of timelessness. The 1986 Triple Quartet is a comparatively terse piece with harmonies that are distinctly thornier than we normally hear from this composer. But as with most of Reich’s works, the music’s polyrhythmic complexity first lures and then captivates.
Finally, Reich’s The Four Sections (1999), scored for full orchestra, offers an expanded timbral palette with far more opportunities for tonal and textural contrast. This is beautiful, serene music–sonically quite similar to Reich’s earlier Variations for Strings, Winds, and Keyboards (which also features those trademark crescendo brass chords)–though Reich’s repetition technique is less dogmatic in this case. By now Reich has discovered the precise moment to shift repeating patterns before they begin to wear. It’s always amazing to hear an ensemble maintain the intense concentration and rhythmic exactitude required to successfully bring off Reich’s music, and David Robertson and the Orchestre National de Lyon do just that, providing highly virtuosic yet deeply felt playing that communicates the music’s message as well as affirming its importance. Naïve’s solid, spacious, and dynamically true recording adds greatly to this disc’s allure.
