Three Tales, Museumsquartier, Vienna

Steve Reich and Beryl Korot's finally completed Three Tales received its premiere performances in Vienna in mid-May in the Museumsquartier; part of the Vienna Festival, which had also instigated the co-commissioning of this work's predecessor, The Cave, more than a decade earlier. The performance I saw struck me as a considerable vindication of the approach that this composer/video-artist partnership has taken to music theatre; one of the further 21 performances of Three Tales worldwide this year would be well worth checking out.

Those who have seen only The Cave will be amazed not only at the technological advances of Three Tales, but also by the imaginative ways in which this husband-and-wife team has capitalised on the resulting flexibility. Some who saw "Hindenburg", the first of the Three Tales (which played in an unfinished version at the Barbican in 1997 and then complete at the Huddersfield Festival the following year) considered that this lacked any properly critical approach towards its documentary material. They, too, may now be impressed by the subtlety and depth of critique with which the succeeding two parts of Three Tales, "Bikini" and "Dolly", integrate images and sounds to make compelling dramatic structures.

In The Cave, Reich and Korot offered a broad-canvassed meditation on their Jewish heritage, with interview and other video footage presented on multiple screens on a gantry that also incorporated the musicians themselves. Technically, the work presented both compositional and presentational problems that made it unwieldy as a model. The talking-heads footage determined the modality and tempo of Reich's music, making long-range musical planning difficult. And The Cave was not only lengthy but alsoexpensive to present.

Technology is itself the subject of Three Tales; or rather, what Reich and Korot call reflections "on the growth and implications of technology during the 20th century". While "Hindenburg" had dealt with the Zeppelin airship of that name and its crash in New Jersey in 1937, the subject of "Bikini" is the atom-bomb tests at Bikini atoll between 1946 and 1954, and that of "Dolly" the sheep cloned in Scotland in 1997.

With deliberate irony, Three Tales takes advantage of ever-advancing technology to examine and criticise the ways in which technology itself is used. These advances permit not only greater integration of music and image, with synchronisation exact or not as desired, but also the use of a single screen on which a variety of different kinds of images, still and moving, can be presented. The result is a work in which much more can happen at once, or at least in more subtle combinations and, in particular, juxtapositions; as a consequence, Three Tales is much shorter than The Cave.

As in The Cave, the players and singers are vital components of the stage picture. The former (exquisitely lit by Matthew Frey in Nick Mangano's production) reflect on the screen action like a Greek chorus. In Vienna, these roles were taken by 10 superlative musicians from Ensemble Modern and five splendid singers from Synergy Vocals, all conducted by Bradley Lubman.

Three Tales lasts 65 minutes, each act longer than the last (now that "Hindenburg" has, to its advantage, been cut down to form a prologue), presenting a dramatically evolving sequence of considerable impetus as well as moment-to-moment impact. "Bikini", the first of the two new tales, has a much more compelling dramatic shape than "Hindenburg". Its tensions accumulate on several visual levels simultaneously, as footage of the islanders and the paraphernalia of their US interlopers combines with the countdown to nuclear explosion, two different stories of the creation of Man and Woman from the Book of Genesis (drummed out on stage and screen) and much else besides. The build-up to the close of this tale is especially impressive.

"Dolly" brings us forward to the present day, and returns to the talking heads that dominated The Cave; Dolly the sheep herself makes just a brief, amusing appearance. Here, Reich and Korot have assembled a cast of scientists who are leading figures in their fields. Richard Dawkins and Rodney Brooks, among others, leap from the screen with personalities that are gradually revealed as the action unfolds. While the sometimes scary opinions of these powerful people on the future of genetic and computer research are faithfully conveyed, "Dolly" leaves us in no doubt about how Reich and Korot regard either the scientists or the rabbi who intervenes to put a very different perspective on matters. With every interview sample in this tale manipulated in pitch or speed, the same tempo is preserved throughout, with a consequent gain in rhythmic intensity that helps banish any worries that the scientific debate itself will overwhelm the work's artistic integrity.

The persistent freeze-framing and sudden modifications of voices are sometimes a little irritating, as is the use of extensive repetition of key words, for instance, "machine". But Korot's painterly manipulation of her documentary material (positively Gauguin-like in "Bikini") and the way in which the later stages of "Dolly" revisit images from all three acts help to make both new tales subtle, absorbing experiences.

And Reich has written some of his finest music of the last 20 years for Three Tales. Now in control of the structure via a typically rigorous ground plan for tonality and tempo, he also contributes tellingly to the evolution of each tale's dramatic shape, providing some fine string music along the way.

Three Tales' combination of vividly imaginative fast music and dark, urgent lyricism can also be experienced in his 1999 Triple Quartet, heard last Tuesday in its London premiere in a recital at the Barbican Centre by the Kronos Quartet. With both Reich and Korot currently on top form, a third music-theatre work is eventually to be expected, in addition to the various small-scale instrumental projects that the composer has up his sleeve for the immediate future.

'Three Tales' will be at the Barbican Centre, London (020-7638 8891) on 18-21 Sept, and will be televised on BBC 4. A DVD is planned. Reich's 'Triple Quartet' is available on Nonesuch 79546