Steve Reich at 80 review – surging, pulsing energy

Barbican, London
The Britten Sinfonia and LSO celebrated the breadth of the composer’s groundbreaking career in two concerts across a weekend marking the Reich’s 80th.

The three senior statesmen of contemporary American music all pass significant landmarks during the current season, and their anniversaries are all being marked with weekend-long events at the Barbican. Celebrations of Philip Glass’s 80th birthday and John Adams’ 70th come later; Steve Reich was the first to be put in the spotlight, with two days of rapturously received concerts and talks marking his 80th birthday.

Eleven of Reich’s scores were performed, ranging across his career from the late-60s experiment in phasing, Pendulum Music, to the European premiere of his latest work, Pulse, which had received its first performance in New York four days earlier. That was the centrepiece of the Britten Sinfonia’s programme, conducted by Clark Rundell, which also included a rare outing for Reich’s second “video opera” Three Tales, which he created with his wife, the video artist Beryl Korot.