Missouri Classical Music News and Notes

Different Trains by Steve Reich is reminiscent of the train trips he took from the East to West coast with his governess in order to remain in the joint custody of his divorced parents. Sometime later Reich thought about the fact that he was making these trips across the continent in the years between 1939 and 1942, when European Jews were also making trips across their continent but for tragically different reasons. In the three movements that comprise the work, Reich contrasts his own experience with that of Holocaust survivors. The voices featured on the prerecorded tracks are those of his governess, a retired Pullman porter who used to work on the trains which ran between New York and Los Angeles, and Holocaust survivors around Reich's own age.

George Crumb's Black Angels is the only string quartet to have been inspired by the Vietnam War. The title refers to the struggle between God and the Devil, and the work is intended as a parable for the troubled time in which it was written. It draws from an arsenal of sounds including shouting, chanting, whistling, whispering, gongs, maracas and crystal glasses. The quartet is amplified in order to generate many of these sounds as well as to create a surreal, if not psychedelic, sound meant to throw the listener off-center.