By the late '60s, Steve Reich had developed his "phasing" technique to the point that it was a central aspect of his compositional style. Originally inspired by hearing two identical tape loops played on separate machines slowly falling out of sync with each other, Reich adopted a procedure of giving multiple instruments (or overdubbed tracks of the same instrument) the same repeated figure, but allowing a player to momentarily speed up the pattern in order to realign the figure in relation to the downbeat. This technique serves as the main feature of interest in works such as Piano Phase and Violin Phase (both from 1967). In the early '70s, however, Reich began to explore other ways of creating the variety of polyrhythms and polyphonies resulting when musical loops are realigned against themselves. One product of this search is his 1973 work Six Pianos. Reich had long toyed with the idea of writing a piece for all of the pianos in a piano store, and in 1972 even secured the space to undertake such a work. Finding that many instruments were unwieldy and incompatible with his intricate rhythmic/melodic matrices, Reich eventually whittled the instrumentation to half a dozen by the time the piece was completed the following year. The result is a texture that both conveys rich harmonies and articulates precise and energetic rhythmic figurations. The work begins with three of the pianists playing the same syncopated rhythmic loop at different pitch levels, which results in a rapid and steady eighth-note string of colorful seventh and ninth chords. Following a technique which Reich introduced two years earlier in Drumming, additional players gradually join in, assembling their own layers of the rhythm note by note or chord by chord until, over the course of several bars, their pattern likewise fills out all the beats of the loop. However, instead of entering on a pattern already present and then phasing the loop ahead, the pattern that slowly forms is already out of alignment with the original figure. The result is something akin to a kaleidoscope whose various facets slowly build over time until suddenly snapping into focus and revealing their symmetries. Likewise, as the secondary patterns slowly build up, the listener's ears are drawn to different parts of the rhythmic contour; the sense of accentuation and phrase shape constantly changes, even as the musical resources and sonorities involved remain constant.

© All Music Guide