Saturday 1 December 2012

List pieces in the papers can be lazy, but something leapt out at me from this one in the Guardian about favourite pieces of 20th-century music: Nico Muhly’s observation that Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians is “for, by and about friends playing together”. Against that, almost every other work on the list, which requires the industrial orchestral process in order to happen, looks old and tired.