Reich - Pulse/Quartet

The Guardian 100

International Contemporary Ensemble/Colin Currie Group
(Nonesuch)

Plus: Colin Currie Group - Steve Reich’s Drumming

Over the past 40 years there have been many pieces by Steve Reich that could legitimately have been called Pulse, but when he finally did get round to using the title in 2015, it was for a work in which “pulse” is by no means the raison d’être of the music. It’s the seamless, intertwining canons in the woodwind and strings that give the shape and character to this ravishing quarter-hour movement, with airy, weightless textures. Only one instrument in the 12-piece ensemble, an electric bass, plays any pitches below middle C – seeming to conjure memories of an earlier generation of US composers, especially Aaron Copland and early Elliott Carter, leaving the pulse that emerges from the piano and bass to provide reticent support.

Harmonically, Pulse is essentially a static piece, as rapt and contemplative as anything in Reich’s output. He has said it was composed as a deliberate contrast to the 2013 Quartet for Percussion that immediately preceded it. That work’s harmonic adventures and episodic structure had gone beyond what he had written before but, despite its discursiveness, remained instantly recognisable as Reich’s work. Its hard-edged rhythms – there’s no mistaking the pulse in any of its three movements – and the percussive textures generated by pairs of pianos and vibraphones have been persistent signatures in his music, though the harmonic subtleties and the colours they paint here are beguilingly new.