Skip to main content
Norges musikkhøgskole Norwegian Academy of Music Search

Different Trains

Experience minimalist pioneer Steve Reich's iconic piece Different Trains, for string quartet and tape, from 1988.

Emmanuel Dyan

Programme

Steve Reich (1936–): Different Trains

  1. Europe, Before the War
  2. Europe, During the War
  3. After the War

Participants

  • Anna Rødevand and Lotte Hellstrøm Hestad (violin)
  • Nanna Ikutomi Sørli (viola)
  • Sophia Hugo Cabo (cello)

– While the trips were exciting and romantic at the time, I now look back and think, if I had been in Europe during this period, as a Jew I would have had to ride very different trains.

Steve Reich Composer

About

During World War II, Reich made train journeys between New York and Los Angeles to visit his parents, who had separated. Years later, he pondered that, as a Jew, had he been in Europe instead of the United States at that time, he might have been travelling in Holocaust trains.

"While the trips were exciting and romantic at the time, I now look back and think, if I had been in Europe during this period, as a Jew I would have had to ride very different trains", Reich writes.

More Concerts

Published: Feb 28, 2022 — Last updated: Mar 3, 2022