WTC 9/11, performed by Kronos Quartet
“A dark, raw, haunting piece, its detached fury indicative of the undiminished powers of a great American artist who will celebrate his seventy-fifth birthday in October.” – The New Yorker
“Finally a 9/11 work that manages to communicate the complex and often contradictory range of emotions, thoughts and feelings caused by that momentous event, played with power and precision by the Kronos Quartet. Steve Reich has written a truly profound work.” – Gramophone
“WTC 9/11 is Reich’s concise memorial to the World Trade Centre atrocity. It’s a restrained, taut piece in three continuous movements, almost ritualized in its plainness, and tremendously powerful in effect.” –The Guardian
WTC 9/11, played by the Kronos Quartet, is one of the most gripping, intense, intelligent, emotionally honest and artistically successful works to come out of the tragedy. – National Public Radio – 10 Favorites of 2011
WTC 9/11 finds Reich in outstanding form; his skillful manipulation of sound resources has created an emotionally raw evocation of he shock, terror and sheer incredulity of that day” –BBC Music Magazine
Haunting and harrowing, with a score both alarming and consoling, WTC 9/11 packs a most powerful punch. – The Independent – UK
The musical memorials to 9/11 are still arriving but, in the end, how many will match the dark power of Steve Reich’s “WTC 9/11? The musical material comes directly from the sampled voices of air traffic controllers, FDNY workers, neighborhood residents, and those who kept watch over the bodies. The rigor and directness of the voice-music connection makes for the work’s stark power. – The Boston Globe
The brief, intense piece, which ended with mourning notes and singing in Hebrew from the Psalms, was both intellectually provocative and deeply moving – Spin Magazine
I assure you, people will look back on WTC 9/11 for years and acknowledge it as one of the most important American compositions of this decade. – CMJ – College Music Journal
I find the whole work startling, emotionally charged and moving. – BBC Radio 3 – CD Review
The result is a score that grabs you and holds you fast until it ends. WTC 9/11 is a masterpiece. – American Record Guide
and Mallet Quartet, performed by So Percussion:
“Mallet Quartet,” performed by So Percussion on vibraphones and five-octave marimbas, is intricate, ebullient, propulsive, sublime. – Seattle Times
The fifteen-minute composition was some kind of miniature crystal cathedral of sound, full of light and air. At a point about a third of the way through, when the hive-like activity of the mallets seemed to drop through a trap door and be instantaneously replaced by a lyrical slow section, the effect was breathtaking. – Spin Magazine
Performed here by one of the piece’s co- commissioners, New York’s superb So Percussion, the Mallet Quartet possesses a quiet beauty that, almost despite its subtleties, demands to be heard.- National Public Radio – 10 Favorites of 2011
The splendid Mallet Quartet, in which two intricate fast movements frame a brief slow rhapsody whose frank lyricism marks a new turn for Reich. – San Francisco Chronicle
Like everything he writes, it’s wonderfully lucid, and calculated precisely. – The Guardian