Minimal Weekend

For a bit of a change this weekend, I went off to Glasgow's Royal Concert Hall for a bit of culture and performances of the work of modern composers Steve Reich and Philip Glass. The Reich/Glass performances, part of Glasgow's Minimal Weekend, were of Reich's Counterpoints, and Glass's Icarus at the Edge of Time - based on Brian Greene's book of the same name.

Beginning with Steve Reich's Violin Phase of the Counterpoint sequence, this was a ten minute solo piece consisting of one violinist playing against three pre-recorded tape loops of himself. Intense stuff, yes, but picking the various patterns out from the looped layers was a fascinating and rewarding experience, "minimal" seems almost a misnomer for this piece. The trick comes from the violinist moving ahead of the tape loop, creating intricate and interlocked lines in the process.

The recital then moved on to Electric Counterpoint, one of Reich's best-known pieces. Again, this was a solo piece, this time for guitar, and also used the tape loop technique. The fifteen minute piece went from fast, to slow, and back to fast, gradually building a loop of 10 guitars, two electric bass parts and the final live solo guitar part. This was probably the highlight, with the climax being something akin to the high point in a trance/dance set by someone like Orbital. It was quite a thrill.

Less of a thrill, but ultimately still rewarding was the final Vermont Counterpoint, a solo piece for alto flute, flute, and piccolo. Again, the tape loop effect was there, with each combination of patterns becoming the base for the next movement of the ten-minute piece. Picking out the patterns was, once more, rewarding, but this was the least enjoyable out of the three.

For each composition, visuals were provided by Glasgow's Pointless Creations. They normally provide visuals for such club nights as Death Disco, and perhaps the experience is best enjoyed off your head on gak and rockers at a sweaty club rather than sitting down in an auditorium. Imagine the primitive visuals used in Star Wars when the Death Star is in range of the rebel base, minus the colour, and you're in the right ballpark.

Moving on, Icarus at the Edge of Time was a less challenging piece but enjoyable nonetheless. The story of Brian Greene's book is of Icarus, a boy on a spaceship making the first interstellar journey. Against his father's wishes, he takes off in a homemade runabout spaceship to investigate a passing black hole, forgetting -vitally - that general relativity predicts that the massive gravitational fields close to black holes slow down time drastically. When he tries to return to the mother ship, he discovers it has vanished, and that 10,000 Earth years have elapsed and he is in the middle of an interstellar highway. Later, when brought aboard a ship, he discovers in the craft's library that he has become a mythical figure, just like the classical Icarus.

Philip Glass's score was rather traditional compared to some of his other work, a bit of John Williams meets Muse, but it married perfectly to the story of Icarus, creating an appropriate sense of wonder, foreboding and excitement. There was a fabulous short film accompanying the piece, created by AI+AI, full of colour and sparkle. This is the sort of thing that will make science all the more accessible to children. It was, though, rather let down by rubbish live narration by equally rubbish Hobbit, Billy Boyd.

Ultimately, this was a terrific experience and I'd reccommend either piece to anyone, should they be performed anywhere else in the near future.