Reich's "Trains" of thought

Synopsis

On a number of occasions, the American composer Steve Reich has suggested that his intensely personal brand of music-making works best in small-ensemble situations. But on today’s date in 2001, at the urging of conductor David Robertson, the Philadelphia Orchestra premiered a “big-band” string orchestra version of Reich’s “Different Trains.”

In its original form, “Different Trains” was scored for a string quartet and tape. As in many of his pieces, Reich based its musical themes on the rhythms and cadences of taped recorded speech patterns and pitches. “The basic idea is that speech recordings generate the musical material for musical instruments,” says Reich.

“The concept of this piece comes from my childhood. When I was one year old, my parents separated. My mother moved to Los Angeles and my father stayed in New York. Since they arranged divided custody, I traveled back and forth by train frequently from 1930 to 1942, accompanied by my governess. While these trips were exciting and romantic at the time, I now look back and think that, if I had been in Europe during this period, as a Jew I would have had to ride very different trains.”

Reich’s musical meditation combined purely instrumental sounds with interviews—clips from his governess, a Pullman porter, and Holocaust survivors—mixed with ambience sounds of American and European trains. In 1988, Reich wrote: “The piece presents both a documentary and a musical reality, and a new musical direction for me.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Steve Reich (b. 1946) Different Trains Kronos Quartet Nonesuch 79176

On This Day

Births

• 1811 - German composer, conductor and pianist Ferdinand Hiller, in Frankfurt am Main;

• 1882 - Hungarian operetta composer Imre [Emmerich] Kálman, in Siófok;

• 1925 - Italian composer Luciano Berio, in Oneglia, Imperia;

• 1929 - American composer George Crumb, in Charleston, West Virginia;

• 1931 - Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina, in Chistopol, Tatar (USSR);

Deaths

• 1799 - Austrian violinist and composer Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf, age 59, at Castle Rothlottia, near Neuhaus (Bohemia);

• 1948 - Austrian composer Franz Lehár, age 78, in Bad Ischl;

• 1949 - Cuban composer and violinist Joaquin Nin y Castellanos, age 70, in Havana;

• 1971 - American composer Carl Ruggles, age 95, in Bennington, Vermont;

Premieres

• 1737 - Rameau: opera "Castor et Pollux," in Paris at the Palais Royal Opéra;

• 1885 - Jhn. Strauss Jr.: operetta, "The Gypsy Baron," in Vienna;

• 1910 - Victor Herbert: operetta, "Naught Marietta," in Syracuse, N.Y.;

• 1930 - Roussel: Symphony No. 3, by the Boston Symphony, Serge Koussevitzky conducting;

• 1931 - Robert Russell Bennett: "Abraham Lincoln" Symphony, by the Philadelphia Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski conducting;

• 1936 - Miaskovsky: Symphony No. 16, in Moscow;

• 1940 - John Alden Carpenter: Symphony No. 1 (revised version), by Chicago Symphony, Frederick Stock conducting;

• 1946 - Bernstein: ballet "Facsimile," at the Broadway Theater in New York City by the Ballet Theater, choreographed by Jerome Robbins, with composer conducting;

• 1946 - Cowell: Symphony No. 4 ("Short Symphony"), by the Boston Symphony, Richard Burgin conducting;

• 1970 - Penderecki: "Kosmogonia," at the United Nations in New York City;

• 1992 - Libby Larsen: Marimba Concerto ("After Hampton"), by the Long Beach Symphony, with soloist William Moersch and JoAnn Falleta conducting;

• 1994 - Harrison Birtwistle: opera "The Second Mrs. Kong," at Glyndeborune;

• 1997 - Geoffrey Burgon: Piano Concerto, in Singapore, with soloist Joanna MacGregor and the Singapore Symphony;

• 1997 - Corigliano: "DC Fanfare," in Washington, D.C., by the National Symphony, Leonard Slatkin conducting;

• 2001 - Steve Reich: orchestral version of "Different Trains," by the Philadelphia Orchestra, David Robertson, conducting;

Others

• 1818 - Felix Mendelssohn, age 9, plays his first public concert, in Berlin;

• 1919 - First performance by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, Walter Rothwell, conductor.