Minimalism at 50, Kings Place, London

Isn’t minimalism the music that puts audiences to sleep? That may be its reputation in the centres of European tradition, but there was nothing soporific about this opening concert of a festival celebrating minimalism’s 50th birthday. Intelligently curated by Igor Toronyi-Lalic, the festival has given Kings Place some much-needed artistic kudos and stolen a march on the offerings at London’s other concert halls, which tend to take a more puritan view of new music. As this beautifully executed programme illustrated, minimalism is a broad church. At its best it makes you think about musical processes without inferring any dogma.

At its worst, as in Terry Riley’s Mescalin Mix and La Monte Young’s 283 is for Henry Flynt, it behaves like a disruptive child whose only concern is to break rules. Those two relics of the pioneering 1961 Chamber Street concert series in New York demonstrated how primitive and anti-musical the movement’s beginnings really were. And yet the ever-so-subtle modulations of Steve Reich’s Piano Phase of 1967 were a reminder of how quickly it grew up. This rendition by Katia Labèque and Nicola Tescari had the finesse that minimalism needs and rarely gets.

It was certainly a coup for Toronyi-Lalic to land Katia and her sister Marielle as his key players, for the Labèques not only drew a bigger audience but also attracted other high-quality players – period instrument exponent Chi Chi Nwanoku, multi-disciplinarian Matthew Barley and rock musicians David Chalmin, Massimo Pulpillo and Raphaël Séguinier. These three, plus Tescari, supplied magic and mystery in their own smoky compositions, where the link with minimalism seemed minimal and the temptation to get up and dance was strong.

For Riley’s In C, minimalism’s 40-minute international anthem, classical and rock joined hands in a performance that had heart and soul – as much a sophisticated jam session as an exquisitely rehearsed party piece. Led by soprano Olivia Chaney, the musicians were clearly having as much fun as their highly concentrated audience, and the beauty of it all was that, despite the constantly recurring pulse, there was none of the repetitiousness which is minimalism’s curse.

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