Conductor: Chloe Rooke
Steve Reich is 90 in a few days’ time, and to celebrate his birthday, the Southbank Centre presents some of the American composer’s best-known works. The Clore Ballroom is the venue for Reich’s most famous composition, the ethereal Music for 18 Musicians, a tightly choreographed dance as much as the most exciting example of minimalist music ever written. But over in Festival Hall, the London Sinfonietta gives us Clapping Music as well as the glorious City Life.
The two musicians make the five-minute Clapping Music seem like child’s play, but it requires the utmost attention when they deliberately desynchronise. It would be so easy to fall into the other’s rhythm. When they finally coincide at the end, the result is one of the best punchlines in modern music.
After this amuse-bouche, conductor Chloe Rooke arrives with the rest of the sinfonietta to perform Pulse from 2015. However, it sounds older, with parts of it echoing the kind of incidental music used in a late-1970s cop TV drama. The pulse of the percussion is similar to 18 Musicians – indeed, it’s typical Reich, although the flutes lend the piece a sense of dreaminess when, before, Reich was jagged. Occasionally, the peacefulness is troubled by some purposeful sharp notes.
Radio Rewrite from 2012 draws inspiration from two Radiohead songs, Everything In Its Right Place and Jigsaw Falling Into Place. The London Sinfonietta premièred it in 2013, but here in 2026 the Oxford band’s Jonny Greenwood plays the bass, joining in the urgent piano and percussion. It’s a tricksy piece that, in its slower movements, has some incredibly long notes for the wind and string instruments before the motif returns.
Jonny Greenwood returns for Electric Counterpoint, playing against a backing track. Although originally performed by Pat Metheny in 1987, it sounds brand new. It is confusing to watch as it’s not always clear which notes are performed live and which are already recorded. You can’t help but look for a loop pedal – there isn’t one – but all the shimmering hallmarks of Reich are there.
However, it’s the last piece, City Life, that really soars. Featuring sampled voices and sounds of train doors opening and shutting, the 1995 composition precisely encapsulates a walk through the urban landscape, navigating crowds and markets and pushing through passersby. At one point, the flutes conjure up a Middle Eastern quarter, underscoring the multiculturalism of any big city. The young pianist Herman Cerisha works hard at the sampler when the shrill sirens of police cars tumble down a city street, and the sounds linger as the audience makes its way home from this entertaining birthday party.
Reviewed on 27 September 2026
