Commissioned by the Kronos Quartet in 2004 to mark his 70th birthday, Terry Riley’s The Cusp of Magic is just the latest gift the minimalist composer and the quartet have given one another in the course of an extraordinarily fruitful musical collaboration that has lasted thirty years. Riley has written more than 20 works for Kronos and their mutual, almost pathological, eclecticism is clearly an important ingredient in their partnership’s longevity. Superficially at least – despite the featured presence of pipa virtuoso Wu Man – The Cusp of Magic is not as conspicuous a cross-cultural exploration as Kronos’s non-Riley recordings Pieces of Africa, Nuevo or their brilliant adventures in Bollywood, You’ve Stolen My Heart. However, the six movements in this work are quite strikingly different from one another, drawing inspiration from musical traditions as various as First Nations peyote rituals, the North Indian gat, Chinese lullabies, Cuban montuno with a bit of theme music from a Russian cartoon thrown in for good measure. For lesser artists it could be a cauldron full toil and trouble, but after three decades hand in glove the charm of Terry Riley and the Kronos Quartet is firm and good.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Kronos Quartet & Wu Man - Terry Riley: The Cusp of Magic (Nonesuch)
Commissioned by the Kronos Quartet in 2004 to mark his 70th birthday, Terry Riley’s The Cusp of Magic is just the latest gift the minimalist composer and the quartet have given one another in the course of an extraordinarily fruitful musical collaboration that has lasted thirty years. Riley has written more than 20 works for Kronos and their mutual, almost pathological, eclecticism is clearly an important ingredient in their partnership’s longevity. Superficially at least – despite the featured presence of pipa virtuoso Wu Man – The Cusp of Magic is not as conspicuous a cross-cultural exploration as Kronos’s non-Riley recordings Pieces of Africa, Nuevo or their brilliant adventures in Bollywood, You’ve Stolen My Heart. However, the six movements in this work are quite strikingly different from one another, drawing inspiration from musical traditions as various as First Nations peyote rituals, the North Indian gat, Chinese lullabies, Cuban montuno with a bit of theme music from a Russian cartoon thrown in for good measure. For lesser artists it could be a cauldron full toil and trouble, but after three decades hand in glove the charm of Terry Riley and the Kronos Quartet is firm and good.
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