Mivos Quartet Records Reich’s 3 String Quartets

Mivos Quartet members Olivia De Prato, Maya Bennardo, Victor Lowrie Tafoya, and Tyler J. Borden (from the booklet for the recording being discussed)

Almost two weeks ago, Deutsche Grammophon released an album of the Mivos Quartet performing Steve Reich’s three string quartets. The recordings took place at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center on the campus of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. The members of the quartet are Olivia De Prato and Maya Bennardo, violist Victor Lowrie Tafoya, and cellist Tyler J. Borden.

Two of the quartets, “WTC 9/11” and “Triple Quartet” were recorded prior to the pandemic in sessions on February 10–14 and March 2–6 in 2020. Things then came to a halt until January of 2022, when “Different Trains” was recorded. The album presented these pieces in reverse chronological order, beginning with “WTC 9/11,” which was Reich’s response to the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2010. This is followed by “Triple Quartet,” which Reich composed in 1998. “Different Trains” was composed about ten years earlier.

Strictly speaking, none of these works are “conventional” string quartets. In all three of them, Mivos performs in conjunction with recorded material; and, in the case of “Triple Quartet,” they are performing with recordings of themselves. In addition, the decision to release the recording in reverse chronological order may well have been a decision to undermine any suggestions that Reich had composed a “cycle.” Rather, in the spirit of Hokusai, these are three “views” of a string quartet performance.

Given that Reich deploys his resources to achieve an impressively “thick” polyphony, I feel it is important to call out the production team lead by Mike Tierney. While there is no substitute for being present at a performance to appreciate the interleaving qualities of that polyphony, Tierney has created an album in which many, if not all, of those qualities can be apprehended. The corollary to that proposition is that this is an album that can stand up to multiple listening experiences, each of which is likely to forge its own path in following the threads of the overall texture.

Deutsche Grammophon should also be credited with providing the attentive listener with a first-rate booklet of notes written by John Schaefer. I have been following Schaefer’s work since my days of living in Stamford, Connecticut, from where I could receive an excellent radio signal of his New Sounds program. After I left the East Coast (never to live there again), I could still make do with his anthology New Sounds: A Listener’s Guide to New Music. Mind you, I do not think it would be derogatory to say that Reich’s approaches to composition are no longer “new;” but I have to say that I have been impressed by the staying power of his works. Those impressions have now been reinforced by the Mivos Quartet.