Terry Riley - In C / Ars Nova Copenhagen & Paul Hillier with Percurama Percussion Ensemble (2007)

ClassicsToday.com, Jed Distler 2/8/2007
Artistic Quality & Sound Quality 10/10 "…a fresh, compelling, lovingly executed, and gorgeously engineered interpretation that all In C fans should hear."

San Francisco Chronicle, Joshua Kosman March 4th, 2007
"…a new and ravishingly beautiful "In C" "Rating: Wild Applause"

Terry Riley¹s masterpiece In C—the work with which American minimalism signed its name in the history book of music—gets a new face lift under the direction of Paul Hillier in this stellar Ars Nova recording. In the liner notes, Hillier explains that, for him, the piece is essentially a contrapuntal work in which “performers are being invited to create polyphony on the spur of the moment.” Hillier had noticed that most previous recordings of In C were for instruments with different timbral characteristics that kept individual lines distinct. In contrast, Hillier felt that the limited timbral range of a chorus would encourage people to hear patterns between the music that each performer was singing. As such, Ars Nova Copenhagen intones Riley's patterns using a wide palette of articulations (for this version, Riley personally underlaid the notes with vocal symbols derived from sacred texts). The singers sensitively employ treble and bass registers, head and chest voice techniques, and both sustained and percussive phrasings. The voices and mallet instruments interact beautifully. Even the steady "pulsing" C-natural upon which everything hangs (provided by a single marimbist) proves a shapelier, more dynamically varied presence than usual. The result of Hillier’s work with Ars Nova Copenhagen is nothing short of an original reinvention of a minimalist classic, one of two “iconic masterpieces” of the 1960s, according to Hiller (the other is Stockhausen’s Stimmung).

Recorded at Focus Recording, Copenhagen
January 17 2005.

Recording producer and sound engineer: Gert Sørensen
Sound engineers: Hans Nielsen and Gert Sørensen
Edit, Mix and Mastering: Gert Sørensen, Serendip Sound Studio 2006

Ars Nova/Dacapo 8.226049