The Colin Currie Group formed 20 years ago to honour Steve Reich’s 70th birthday with a performance of Drumming. This year, the great American composer turns 90, making this, the group’s fourth Reich album on Currie’s own label, a double celebration.
Sextet, hailing from 1985, features two keyboardists playing piano and synthesisers alongside four percussionists on marimbas, vibraphones, bass drums, crotales, sticks and tam-tams. Shifting patterns interlock with the precision of a Swiss watch across one of the composer’s typical fast, slow, fast, slow, fast arcs. Currie’s recording flickers with subtle nuances with a naturalistic sound less closely mic’d than in Reich’s own classic accounts.
In 1986’s Six Marimbas, a rescoring of 1973’s Six Pianos, Reich has two of the instruments rise and fall in volume within the canonic textures of the remaining four. Exuberant in spirit, its woody tones fall easily on the ear. Currie’s relaxed approach – he takes 22 minutes where Reich drives it home in 16 – feels enjoyably chilled.
The Double Sextet was composed in 2007. Six instrumentalists perform against a recording of themselves in one of Reich’s most hypnotic works, performed here with plenty of dynamic niceties. Dance Patterns, written for choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, makes an attractive makeweight.
