The “smart and dazzling” new-music quartet (Village Voice) kicks off their series with a stunning collection of music by three of today’s top living composers.
Shifting patterns rise and fall in hypnotic arcs in Steve Reich’s exuberant Music for Pieces of Wood (1973), performed entirely on pitched claves. A clear homage to Reich’s piece, Bryce Dessner’s atmospheric Music for Wood and Strings suspends similarly intricate patterns in clouds of reverb. The evening culminates in David Lang’s breakthrough percussion quartet, The so-called laws of nature, which reveals an entirely new realm of music through a whimsical orchestra of invented instruments, many constructed by the performers themselves.
