It has been an interesting year for Terry Riley’s In C, with a recent offering by Bang on a Can on its Cantaloupe Records label and now this “re-interpretation” by the European Music Project and Zingorii++, which is two people in electronic collaboration. Don’t look for the thoughtful organization of the Bang on a Can clan: this is more like “Switched on In C” or even “Hooked on In C”. Because of the open-ended nature of this score, there is no proscribed “right” way to play it, but apparently there is a wrong one.
The point this rendition misses is the athletic quality of the work: In C, which is comprised of 53 separate melodic units plus a pulse, is about reaction and interaction of live musicians, not just creating new and allegedly exciting interpretations. Sure, the EMP uses real players against the electronic sounds (there are violins and wind instruments as well as a beat box) but the sense of the work growing out of itself is lost. A truly excellent performance feels like a multi-movement work, but instead of developing or evolving, this one reads as staid and generic rather than exciting and self-discovering, largely due to cheap electronic sounds that may have been interesting 25 or 30 years ago.
The very long and very detailed booklet notes, worth looking into for In C mavens (the text is broken up according to the score’s 53 melodic units), spend a fair amount of time in defense of this version, down to its too-slow tempo. Invoked are club music, the DJ scene, trance, the fact that the world has moved from LP to CD, and other tragically hip pretensions to evolution. They even make specious claims in the manner of “…in 2038 In C will be performed solo by a genetically modified multi-instrumentalist clown with 68 arms and 11 heads.” Indeed. The music doesn’t back up this alleged progress–this recording might have broken ground in 1971, but today it simply feels behind the times. This is a disc that only In C completists can love. Try either the composer’s own recording on Sony or, if you want a more recent, highly caffeinated and precise version, try Bang on a Can.
