To mark Steve Reich’s 90th birthday today, Deutsche Grammophon has reissued his landmark 1974 recording of Drumming in a new all-analogue edition.
Part of the label’s Original Source series, the deluxe 3-LP set has been newly mastered and cut directly from the original four-track master tapes for the first time. It pairs the 85-minute Drumming with Six Pianos and Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ, performed by Reich and members of the Steve Reich Ensemble.
Recorded at Hamburg’s Polydor Studios in January 1974, the original release arrived at a pivotal moment in Reich’s career. Drumming, composed after his studies of percussion in Ghana, represented what Reich described as the “final refinement” of his phasing technique, while the two later works pushed his ideas around repetition, pulse and shifting instrumental colour further.
The new edition retains the original artwork and adds photographs, facsimiles of recording documents and essays tracing the sessions, tape history and all-analogue remastering process.
