Recording: Reich Drumming / Colin Currie Group (Colin Currie Records)
***** May D’Or ‘It’s hard to imagine how this inaugural disc could be made any better.’
Diapason, May 2018
***** Performance ***** Recording “Colin Currie Group’s version is highly immediate and resonant... honed through long performance practice, brings you into a magic circle where every impact is precisely heard, every overtone burnished.”
BBC Music Magazine, May 2018
"Very, very special!"
Stretto, May 2018
"The authenticity of this performance is clear: Reich and Currie have known each other for years, the percussionist a prominent advocate of the composer’s work"
Opus Klassiek, May 2018
**** "Muscular and nuanced, punchy and poetic, this is a thrilling must-have."
Classical Ear, May 2018
Editor's Choice "These guys have a pedigree with this unfathomably difficult score and their fresh, slick recording shows it. Handling of the overlapping of Reich’s 12 beat pattern – polyrhythmic as each of the nine percussionists, two vocalists, piccolo player and whistler shimmy on to their own individual down-beat – is rock solid. On top, the playing is more than secure: confident, bright and delivered on the front foot, in apparent contrast to the ritualistic sobriety with which Reich and his musicians would play the piece in its infancy. The performance is tighter than that from Ictus, the current Gramophone recommendation. It is also more rooted, as neat and magnificent as a Rothko in its sewing-up of the bigger picture. A Drumming for this decade – and probably a few to come, too." Gramophone, April 2018
"These musicians have long familiarity with Reich and with this work, and it shows: they are comfortable in the music’s framework, in its skin. Highly recommend."
All Music, April 2018
"Infectiously playful, the Colin Currie Group drift through Reich’s score. The young Brits bring each note to life and their drums sing."
BR Klassik, April 2018
"The Colin Currie Group’s performance is nothing short of a powerhouse...a visceral thrill: epic, cathartic, and (perhaps especially for pure percussion music) profoundly touching"
Arts Fuse, April 2018
"an alluring blend of sonorities ... this recording draws on their experience in perfecting its intricate rhythmic patterns. The percussionists and the wordless voices of Synergy Vocals alike come across with a vivid presence."
Financial Times, March 2018
***** “The album marks the debut of Colin Currie Records, a promising new outlet for the artistry and flair of Britain’s most adventurous percussion player ... This recording of Steve Reich’s percussion epic is thunderously exciting, thrusting us into the action.”
The Times, March 2018
"a blistering account of Reich’s masterpiece"
Classical Source, March 2018
"sheer physicality and visceral intensity"
Guardian, February 2018