Steve Reich+ – Season 25/26 – Programme note

Dimensions

6-7 November 2025

Steve Reich+

New Dimensions

Thursday 6 November, 7.30pm The Queen's Hall, Edinburgh

Friday 7 November, 7.30pm City Halls, Glasgow

JOE DUDDELL Snowblind*

HELEN GRIME River (UK Premiere)

Interval of 20 minutes

STEVE REICH Runner

STEVE REICH Double Sextet

Colin Currie director/percussion

*The performance of Snowblind is supported by Resonate, a PRS Foundation initiative in partnership with Association of British Orchestras and BBC Radio 3.

Currie

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What You Are About To Hear

JOE DUDDELL (b.1972)

Snowblind (2001)

I Vivace

II Lento

III

The performance of Snowblind is supported by Resonate, a PRS Foundation initiative in partnership with Association of British Orchestras and BBC Radio 3.

HELEN GRIME (b.1981)

River (2023) (UK Premiere)

I II

STEVE REICH (b.1936)

Runner (2016)

I Sixteenths

II Eighths

III Quarters

IV Eighths

V Sixteenths

STEVE REICH (b.1936)

Double Sextet (2007)

I Fast

II Slow

III Fast

From the gentle unfolding of rhythmic lyricism to inexorable organic growth and flow, alongside minimalism that pushes against the strictures of that very definition, tonight’s all 21st-century programme revolves around Colin Currie – as percussion soloist, conductor and trusted collaborator.

Our opening piece, Snowblind , is one of three works that the Norwich-born, Manchester-raised composer and conductor Joe Duddell has written for Currie. Duddell studied at Salford University and the Royal Academy of Music, and has written for many international orchestras and festivals, as well as collaborating with bands Elbow and James. He currently teaches songwriting and composition at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts and is a member of the groups Drift Chamber, Ex Catalogue, Pullover and Stella Martyr. He writes about tonight’s opening piece:

In Snowblind the three movements (lasting about 18 minutes) are primarily concerned with unity rather than a notion of conflict/resolution between the soloist and ensemble. The work is perhaps more Baroque in outlook, having ritornello and episodic sections throughout the piece. The first violin, viola and cello are utilised as ‘link’ instruments between the soloist and ensemble, and have virtuosic sections themselves. I wanted the solo percussionist to be able to ‘sing’ with the ensemble, hence the predominance of the tuned instruments: marimba, vibraphone and crotales. The use of the larger (and potentially louder) percussion instruments would not have been suitable for the intimate nature of this piece.

The title is purely abstract and as usual for me comes from a non-music source – it was the title of a book I was reading at the time of embarking on writing the piece.

Snowblind was commissioned by the BT Scottish Ensemble with subsidy from the Scottish Arts Council and the Friends of the BT Scottish Ensemble. The first performance was given by Colin Currie and the BT Scottish Ensemble, 3 April 2002, Eden Court Theatre, Inverness.

Tonight’s second composer, Helen Grime, was born in York, and moved to Scotland with her parents as a baby, studying at the City of Edinburgh Music School and St Mary’s Music School. She also took composition lessons from the age of 12 with Icelandic multi-musician Hafliði Hallgrímsson, for many years the SCO’s Principal Cellist. She’s been Associate

Composer with the Hallé and Composer in Association at London’s Wigmore Hall, and is currently Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music. She writes about River :

A river has many characteristics that have inspired composers throughout history. The flow and energy, violence, and threat of destruction but also the possibility for calm and moments of glassy stasis are aspects that have driven my imagination.

My piece is in two movements; the first is full of rapid, coursing motion coupled with cascades and bright, fanfarelike outbursts. Towards its close there are sunken, muted passages that hint towards the second movement, much darker in tone. The following movement is much slower and calmer but there are

layers of whirling activity keeping it in a constant state of flux. As a river gathers momentum making its way towards the sea, this movement has an inevitable sense of forward motion. I wanted to compose a piece that is in some way connected to the location of the premiere performance’s hall, the orchestra (the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg), and premiere conductor Kent Nagano, so the musical material is largely derived from musical ciphers combining the letters of the River Elbe with the initials of orchestra and conductor. As the piece evolves, this material explodes and takes many new directions.

Steve Reich, a founding father of minimalism, is one of a loose group of US composers who reacted against what they saw as the bewildering complexity of new music by focussing instead on simplicity, slow change and – to quote the title of an influential essay by Reich – music as a gradual process. At its simplest, in works such as Piano Phase or Violin Phase , that meant repeating a melody over and over again on one instrument, while another does the same but gradually moves out of sync, creating fascinating aural patterns.

By the time he came to write the two pieces that close tonight’s concert, however, Reich’s music had moved on significantly from his earlier asceticism, and even from the rich, rippling repetitions of a classic work such as Music for 18 Musicians . Reich’s more recent music retains his distinctive style but has a far greater transparency, with more of a focus on the unfolding of melody, quicker harmonic changes, and even the odd passing moment of

dissonance – as tonight’s two pieces demonstrate.

Reich writes about his first piece in tonight’s concert:

Runner , for a large ensemble of winds, percussion, pianos and strings, was completed in 2016 and is about 16 minutes in duration. While the tempo remains more or less constant, there are five movements, played without pause, that are based on different note durations. First even sixteenths, then irregularly accented eighths, then a very slowed-down version of the standard bell pattern from Ghana, fourth a return to the irregularly accented eighths, and finally a return to the sixteenths but now played as pulses by the winds for as long as a breath will comfortably sustain them. The title was suggested by the rapid opening and my awareness that, like a runner, I would have to pace the piece to reach a successful conclusion.

Tonight’s second piece by Reich, Double Sextet , comes from nine years earlier. He writes about the work:

There are two identical sextets in Double Sextet . Each one is comprised of flute, clarinet, vibraphone, piano, violin and cello. Doubling the instrumentation was done so that, as in so many of my earlier works, two identical instruments could interlock to produce one overall pattern. For example, in this piece you will hear the pianos and vibes interlocking in a highly rhythmic way to drive the rest of the ensemble.

The piece can be played in two ways; either with 12 musicians, or with

Steve Reich, a founding father of minimalism, is one of a loose group of US composers who reacted against what they saw as the bewildering complexity of new music

six playing against a recording of themselves.

The idea of a single player playing against a recording of themselves goes all the way back to Violin Phase of 1967 and extends though Vermont Counterpoint (1982), New York Counterpoint (1985), Electric Counterpoint (1987) and Cello Counterpoint (2003). The expansion of this idea to an entire chamber ensemble playing against pre-recordings of themselves begins with Different Trains (1988) and continues with Triple Quartet (1999) and now to Double Sextet . By doubling an entire chamber ensemble one creates the possibility for multiple simultaneous contrapuntal webs of identical instruments. In Different Trains and Triple Quartet all instruments are strings to produce one large string fabric.

In Double Sextet there is more timbral variety through the interlocking of six different pairs of percussion, string and wind instruments.

The piece is in three movements – fast, slow, fast – and within each movement there are four harmonic sections built around the keys of D, F, A flat and B or their relative minor keys B, D, F and G sharp. As in almost all my music, modulations from one key to the next are sudden, clearly setting off each new section.

Double Sextet is about 22 minutes long and was completed in October 2007. It was commissioned by eighth blackbird and received its world premiere by that group at the University of Richmond in Virginia on March 26, 2008.

© David Kettle

Colin Currie

Hailed as being “at the summit of percussion performance today” (Gramophone), Colin Currie is a soloist and conductor who champions new music at the highest level. Currie is the soloist of choice for many of today’s foremost composers and conductors, and has appeared with orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and London Philharmonic Orchestra.

A dynamic and adventurous soloist, Currie’s commitment to commissioning and creating new music has been recognised by the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Instrumentalist Award. Currie has premiered works by composers such as Steve Reich, Louis Andriessen, HK Gruber, Sir James MacMillan, Mark Anthony Turnage, Jennifer Higdon, Brett Dean, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Helen Grime, Kalevi Aho, Julia Wolfe, Andy Akiho, Andrew Norman, Nicole Lizée and Dani Howard.

Highlights of the 2025/26 season include a major European tour and season opening concerts with Scottish Chamber Orchestra/Emylanychev, performing MacMillan’s Veni Veni Emmanuel – a work Currie has performed more than 150 times. Elsewhere, concerto appearances include the world premiere of Double Concerto Memoirs by Erkki-Sven Tüür with Tamsin Waley-Cohen and United Strings of Europe; Aho’s Sieidi with Porto Symphony; Andriessen Tapdance and Wolfe Body Language with Belgian National Orchestra; the German premiere of Akiho’s Percussion Concerto with Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie; and concertos by Nicole Lizée and Danny Elfman with Vancouver Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic and Oregon Symphony Orchestras.

Currie’s conducting career began with the Colin Currie Group in performances of music by Steve Reich, and quickly grew into programmes exploring American minimalism and contemporary British composers. He has conducted the London Symphony Orchestra, Hallé Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Asko/Schoenberg Ensemble, Britten Sinfonia and São Paulo Symphony Music Academy, among others. This season Currie conducts the BBC Philharmonic, play/directs with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Belgian National Orchestra, and future plans include debuts with the Royal Northern Sinfonia and BBC Scottish Symphony.

Currie has been Artist in Association at London’s Southbank Centre and is currently Visiting Professor of Modern Ensembles at the Royal Academy of Music and Artistic Director of the Colin Currie Group.

11-12 December, 7.30pm

Edinburgh | Glasgow sco.org.uk Featuring three iconic pieces by radical composer John Adams.

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