Variations for Winds, Strings and Keyboards

Program notes

About the Work

Variations for Winds, Strings and Keyboards (1979) was Reich’s first work for orchestra, commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony and premiered in 1980. It leaves out percussion and adds pianos and electric organs to the winds, brass and strings. Writing for a traditional orchestral body was a significant step for a composer who had built his career with his own hand-picked ensemble, and the piece translates his pulsing, interlocking style into the warmer, more sustained sound of massed strings and winds. Despite its title it is less a set of discrete variations than a continuous, flowing process: a chaconne-like cycle of harmonies that moves through several keys before coming home.

What to Listen For

Listen for how Reich adapts his minimalist language to the orchestra: the steady pulse and repeating patterns are still there, but now clothed in the rich, blended sonority of strings and winds rather than mallets and pianos alone. The music unfolds in long, slowly shifting harmonic waves. Listen for the way chords gradually change underneath the rippling surface, for the raspy buzz of the electric organs binding the sound together, and for the broad, almost romantic warmth of the strings. It is among the most lush of Reich’s works, a bridge between his ensemble pieces and his later orchestral writing.