



Steve Reich has been described by The Guardian as one of a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical history" and as the greatest musical thinker of our time by The New Yorker. Reich celebrates his 80th birthday on 3 October 2016, and 'The ECM Recordings' brings together the landmark albums 'Music for 18 Musicians', 'Octet/Music for a Large Ensemble/Violin Phase' and 'Tehillim' in a limited edition set to mark the occasion. Reich himself plays percussion on both 'Music for 18 Musicians' and 'Tehillim'. Originally released in 1978, 1980 and 1982, each of these recordings had a decisive influence which continues to reverberate across musical idioms. The 3-CD box set includes a 44-page booklet with original liner notes by Steve Reich, a new essay by Paul Griffiths, and session photography by Deborah Feingold and Barbara Klemm.
D**R
Splendid!
Splendid stuff. I didn't expect the sound quality to be so good!
V**N
Music great - packaging not so much
I'll keep this short. The music is great. The recording and mastering are excellent.So why three stars? Well, the packaging. Firstly, this set comes with a cheap card sleeve. The total size of the box is the same as a single Jewelcase CD. Inside the jewelcase are three cheap card sleeves, a CD in each. Bizarrely, ECM decided to make this card sleeves over-sized. There's a good 1cm or so of space inside each one, which isn't great as the CD's move around.The booklet is excellent at 44 pages, and includes a new article along with the original liner notes for each album, including lots of black and white pictures.You can't really go wrong with this - but at £25 at the time of writing, it's a little too much for the package.
Trustpilot
2 weeks ago
2 months ago