Steve Reich is the Bob Dylan of classical music: Everyone loves the revolutionary early stuff (“Come Out,” “Piano Phase,” “Four Organs,”) but the variety and longevity of the career that followed inspires more controversy. And also like Dylan, whose 2020 album “Rough and Rowdy Ways” was largely acclaimed, Reich’s most recent work is worth a listen even for skeptics of the composer’s more contemporary output. “Traveler’s Prayer” (2020) for four voices, two vibraphones, piano and strings spirals around three Jewish chants and texts, bathing the listener in what feels like water flecked with sunlight. There is no Reichian groove.
“Traveler’s Prayer” was given its U.S. premiere on Tuesday at Carnegie Hall. A week prior, I spoke with Reich by phone about first-performance anxieties, his modifications of Biblical texts for the piece, and the similarities between travel and death.
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