Steve Reich: Runner / Music for Ensemble and Orchestra

This is music in which truly every note counts, creating a thrilling sense of an unstoppable chain of events unfolding in front of your ears. Minimalist American composer Steve Reich has referred to Music for Ensemble and Orchestra as “Runner II,” and little wonder: both works are cast in five movements, they share the same palindromic ABCBA structure, and they derive their rhythmic profiles from an ingenious cycle of semiquavers, quavers, and crotchets. Both exhilarate in highly articulate soundworlds activated by two pianos, which set in motion the music’s mesmerizing ostinatos. And yet, in these hugely engaging performances from the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the bracingly dynamic direction of Susanna Mälkki, one is made unmistakably aware of the differences between the deft, chamber-scale Runner and the Music for Ensemble and Orchestra’s orchestral resonance and depth.