Spectra Ensemble - Filip Rathé

In the middle part of his triptych for two pianos, Györgi Ligeti openly pays homage to two of his co-composers by portraying himself together with them in the title of the piece: 'Selbsporträt mit Reich und Riley'. Thus Ligeti immediately focuses the listener's attention on the quite striking relationship between the slightly erratic patterns in his own music and the shifting or canon-like patterns in the music of Steve Reich and Terry Riley. How a European composer can be in keeping with an aspect of American minimal music without thereby becoming one of its followers can also be heard in the music of Karel Goeyvaerts. Counterbalancing these works are two classics of American minimalism. Frederic Rzewski wrote Coming Together as a reaction to the harshly suppressed prison riot in Attica, New York in 1971. He took the text for the piece from a letter written by Sam Melville, one of the riot leaders who was killed during the conflict. Melville's description of how time passes in prison is given an extra dimension in the music as a result of the penetrating repetitive phrases that Rzewski composed as accompaniment. Reich's 'Eight Lines is a chamber orchestration of 'Octet', one of his most animated compositions, containing rumbling pianos, fat chords for the strings and elegant arabesques for the wind instruments.