Terry Riley “In C”, Cantelli Orchestra, Milan, San Vito’s Church, 09.18.2022

I was really excited last Sunday since I heard rumours about Riley in person attending a performance of some of his works for orchestra and improvisors for an amount of two hours and a half at San Vito’s Church in Milan. None of this happened: a bunch of musicians instead, partly taken from the Cantelli Orchestra and partly students and beginners, performed an half an hour version of Riley’s famous composition In C. I was not disappointed, but I have to make some notes.

Terry Riley is a composer I discussed reviewing one of his last discographical outputs here. Born in 1936, father of the so called ‘minimalism’ with La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela and Steve Reich, he studied at the San Francisco College and then at Berkley. During the first half of the Sixties he toured Europe with various musicians playing improvised music. Then he started studying Indian music and philosophy under the master Pandit Pran Nath.

In C is one of his most famous works. It all starts from a pulsation in C from the piano or electronic impulse, and develops with various musicians responsible of a music that can be defined ‘psychedelic’ in the wider sense of the word. Every musician plays few notes or a figure, adding layers on layers trying to avoid every defined form of chant or melody creating instead a multi-layered musical sensation.

The score features only about 50 musical figures in the order they have to be performed. When these fragments will be played, from which instrument, for how much time are up to the musicians themselves. The musicians involved in Sunday’s performance under the direction of Alessandro Calcagnile were a xylophone, a violin, a flute, three clarinets, and a vibraphone. All musicians were equally trained during a common workshop.

The performance was really interesting but, as far as the handling of the sonorous fragments, some of them were only a hint to a melody or a phrase, others were too much defined in comprarison at least to a classic recording released by Columbia in 1968, as far as I can remember. The too much defined phrases broke that sensation or feeling of trance induced by the rest of the music, but I have to admit it is difficult to choose what phrases to play, how and when during performances like these.

Obviously the environment played a distinctive role in the rendition of the music. Being in a church with that peculiar sound and natural amplification is of help for all music, but for this kind of music in particular. The audience has responded warmly so, net of the next important future performance of the review Milano Suona Contemporanea (Wednesday Sept. 23, flutist Birgit Nolte on musics by Karlheinz Stockhausen), this was one of the most intriguing performances of contemporary music in Milano this autumn.