Music for 18 Musicians
The pulsations of Steve Reich's landmarkMusic for 18 Musicianssignify a New Music precipice. Where so much music after World War II explored  extremes of tone, time, and register, Reich--and some of his colleagues in the  1960s and after--gravitated towards immersion in repetitions and telescoped  focus on tonal areas. The combination of piano, vibraphone, marimba, xylophone,  clarinets, violin, cello, and female voices is intoxicating in Reich's hands.  Reich creates a middle-register, ringing vamp with burnished reed palpitations  and, eventually, quick, rolling piano figures emerge in tandem with the  percussion. This recording is the second-best known, next to the ECM Records  version of the piece, and is warm and colorfully tingling.--Andrew  Bartlett