*1/2 Steve Reich

PROVERB, NAGOYA MARIMBAS, CITY LIFE

(Nonesuch)

The text for the vocal piece "Proverb" -- "How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life!" (Wittgenstein) -- was certainly a dangerous one for a minimalist to choose. Steve Reich's work is always threatening to be not enough, and in the case of these recent pieces it isn't. The best of the three is the aforementioned "Proverb," in which Reich enlists the skilled Theater of Voices and reconceives early music as a minimalist vocal exercise. The least successful is the ambitious "City Life," in which Reich uses samples of street sounds to evoke the textures of New York. Here it becomes clear that these pieces are only as interesting as the sounds the composer chooses to utilize -- and though the singers of the Theater of Voices are lovely to listen to, even when almost nothing seems to be happening with them, the same cannot be said of sidewalk dope pushers and NYC Fire Department radio messages.

-- Damon Krukowski