Steve Reich led a concert of his works at Royal Festival Hall in London's Southbank Centre Saturday night, to which The Times (UK) gives four stars. For the event, the composer joined the London Sinfonietta on his 1976 masterwork Music for 18 Musicians and later performed Clapping Music (1972) with Bang on a Can member David Cossin; Bang on a Can also performed 1984's Sextet with the Talujon Percussion Quartet; and guitarist Mark Stewart played Electric Counterpoint (1987).

"Three thousand people sat gripped on Saturday night by 11 musical chords elongated over 57 minutes," says Times critic Richard Morrison. "Nearly half a century has passed since Steve Reich’s first concerts, but the standing ovation after Music for 18 Musicians suggested that his brand of minimalism hasn’t lost its hypnotic allure. And hypnotic is surely the right word."

The Times describes Reich's work as "spellbinding," not least "the magnificent, Wagnerian splurge of Music for 18 Musicians," in which, as with Sextet, "you sense that Reich, like William Blake, is seeing worlds in a grain of sand." In the latter piece, Morrison finds, as well, "something else not usually associated with 'pure' minimalism—emotion."

Read the complete concert review at entertainment.timesonline.co.uk.

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The Guardian gives the concert four stars as well, summing it up as "a sort of greatest-early-hits collection." Reviewer George Hall describes Music for 18 Musicians as "one of the composer's outstanding achievements" and a "remarkable piece of sonic architecture." Hall has further praise for the performers who brought the piece to life in Saturday's concert:

In a performance as good as this, which involved four members of Synergy Vocals adding their almost imperceptible harmonic descants to the Sinfonietta players' impeccably timed relays, the work seemed to exist in an eternal present, forever changing even as it remained paradoxically the same.

Read the review at guardian.co.uk.