Book completed

Penric's Mission, by Lois McMaster Bujold. Reread (aloud to J.).

"Different Trains"

Last spring, when I took that class on the history of the string quartet, I learned about Steve Reich's "Different Trains." As a small child, he regularly travelled by train between his parents, who lived in Los Angeles and New York, then as an adult he realized that during the same era, if he'd been a Jew in Europe, he would have been on a very different train. This work is very unusual - the string quartet has to play alongside a recording that mixes three other string quartets, repeating voices from interviews Reich did with numerous people, and historic recordings of train sounds from that era, all in Reich's characteristic "minimalist" style.

Next week, the Delgani String Quartet (which had taught that class) is going to perform this work, which is rather difficult to listen to, and tonight we had a preview. Although I don't exactly like it, I did find it more tolerable than I had last spring, which is good... Familiarity helps, I'm sure.