Philip Glass – Violin Concerto No. 2 “The American Four Seasons”

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Classical music review, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Marin Alsop, Minimalism, Philip Glass, Robert McDuffie, The American Four Seasons

Shimmers, soaring violin, and addictive brilliance

Philip Glass I know is somewhat of a ‘Marmite composer’ – even among his fans (of whom I am one) and this particular piece of work appears to be even more Marmiteish than most.

Some regretted the early Glass turning away from much more avant-garde work, following instead a combination of minimalism and extreme romanticism, finding him become too accessible perhaps, or too formulaic, as the rushes and the glittery shimmers and repetitions he is known for, plus his lyricism, has meant he has often been the background to film, TV and commercial, with snippets of works getting regular airings.

Personally, I find his trademarks work for me well, and have only once felt he was running a little on empty and plagiarising himself – his 2011 opera The Perfect American – but that is possibly because I can’t imagine anything from Glass, in operatic form, can match Satyagraha, where the subject matter (Gandhi) met the elevation of the music. The Perfect American portrayed Disney, a darker, less elevated individual than others (Einstein, Gandhi, Akhnaten) who have been a useful fit for Glass, a Buddhist, in his operas

This particular piece was written for the American violinist Robert McDuffie in 2009 and is referred to as ‘The American Four Seasons. McDuffie had been interested in a piece which would serve as a ‘companion’ to Vivaldi’s popular work, but it was not, as far as I understand, composed as any kind of variation on Vivaldi – it was merely a work in four movements.

McDuffie did connect it more to the Vivaldi piece. Glass created a set of four solo pieces for the violin (specifically for McDuffie) to stand in place of violinist cadenzas within pieces. Each ‘solo’ now precedes one of the four orchestral movements

The order in which each movement and solo is to be played is then left to the individual soloist and conductor. That is, the interpreters decide which piece belongs to which season, and, indeed the order in which the ‘year of seasons’ should start.

Personally I found that part of Glass’s explanation – handing control to the players, or, in these days of playlists, to the listener to programme and change a playing order as they choose, a bit spurious. I chose to buy the CD for a better quality of sound than a squashed MP3. And so unless I want to be fiddling around with the remote out of some desire to play mindgames, listen from start to finish. Curiously, I’m not even particularly ‘bovvered’ to want to play guessing games over seasons. I am content with this as a wonderful piece of music. And will continue to eat spoonfulls of this musical Marmite with enormous enjoyment, again and again

Marin Alsop conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra in this recording, from the European première of the piece at the Royal Festival Hall in 2010.

Meanwhile………apologies, it was a blogger who alerted me to this recording, and I didn’t note down who you were before rushing off to buy it, more than a month ago. I can’t find who you are from any tag search – if you read this, please leave me a comment, and I can embed a link to your original post which included this, but wasn’t specifically ABOUT the piece

Discovered! It was, of course, Victoria Addis’ fabulously absorbing, wonderfully analytical blog A Hermit’s Progress I have been happily spending time on that blog, and the link will take you to a veritable cornucopia of wonderful musical delights, in a rare musical blog post on her site – she is normally writing (and speaking) equally engagingly about literature
Philip Glass -Violin Concerto No. 2 Amazon UK
Philip Glass -Violin Concerto No. 2 Amazon USA

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Philip Glass – The Hours

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Film Score, Philip Glass, The Hours

An excellent introduction to the Glass World

This CD stands alone in its own right, as well as a beautifully apt score to a movie. Most of the Glass hallmarks are there, the repetitions, the slow building of change, the shimmering dissonance, the beautiful, yearning melodic musicality, but packaged in more bite sized morsels, piece on piece, to fit the demands of a film score. And moreover a film which perfectly is attuned to the reflective, interior, plangent and yearning landscape which Glass often inhabits.

The more I steep myself in Glass’s music (and I’m pretty steeped in it!) the more I find myself questioning the use of the term minimalist or minimalism to describe his music. I find him an intensely romantic musician, and this music in particular is romantic in the way that Rachmaninov’s music is romantic – lyrical, melodic, with the arc of a musical line very clear, and with a blue, often minor key unresolved longing built into it.

The Hours is particularly fine in hinting at subtexts below the sometimes busy dynamics of a piece – listen to ‘I’m Going To Make A Cake’ for an example, where there are phrases of turbulence and activity, quite unsettling, and simultaneously something deep, slow, sorrowful and painful in the theme. Very apt for acting as counterpoint to the women’s lives (in the film/book) where there is actually huge drama and intensity going on, but its driven by interior landscape.

I like the video someone made of this, which rather captures something large, beautiful, mysterious – but also terrifying going on – like a meaning which can’t be grasped, caught on the edge of potential annihilation, but, maybe something new, some wondrous creation about to arise. I find myself on the edge of drowning in despair and expanding into promise with this particular piece – an ‘on the edge’, can go either way, piece of music, which potently illustrated the interior of the character in the movie, in a heartbreaking, heart making, scene

This is Glass for when I need a Glassfix but don’t have the time to listen to a 20 minute piece, as each track here has is own completion, as well as being part of a whole. Except that, as always with his music, I end up wanting more, so arrive late at my destination…………

Philip Glass – The Hours Amazon UK
Philip Glass – The Hours Amazon USA

Philip Glass – Songs From Liquid Days

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Douglas Perry, Janice Pendarvis, Kronos Quartet, Linda Ronstadt, Philip Glass, Songs From Liquid Days, The Roches

And The Music Spins Dynamically Round And Round

I love Philip Glass’s edgy, insistent, questing rhythms and arising melodies. The inexorable, subtly building and changing repetitions remind me curiously of Wagner – much cooler, much more cerebral, less viscerally overpowering, but as wonderfully getting under the skin.

This particular venture, quite old now, was a collaboration between Glass and respected, interesting lyricists – Paul Simon, Suzanne Vega, David Byrne, Laurie Anderson  are some of that number

For me the tracks which particularly stand out are:

Lightning (lyrics by Suzanne Vega) sternly sung by Janice Pendarvis, for the brilliant, almost hurtfully quicksilvery use of brass and beat – as electrically charged and unsettling as the storm it describes, and the releasing gentleness of the strings once the storm has passed – only to start up again as the next storm burst happens again. Great stuff

Open the Kingdom, lyrics by David Byrne, has the liquid indeed vocal line sung by Douglas Perry rising and flowing exultantly over Glass’s rich orchestral textures, the whole like the experience of watching a bird in flight across the endless, eternal sea.

And then there’s the beautiful combination of Linda Ronstadt‘s voice with Glass’s music, played by the Kronos Quartet – plangent, soulful, tender on, firstly, Vega’s lyrics on ‘Freezing’ –

 If you had no name, if you had no history…..if it were only you naked, on the grass

and finally the love song in reflection, as the man who can’t sleep thinks of the women in his life and what they brought….a beautiful recounting of human qualities, in Laurie Anderson’s lyrics on ‘Forgetting’ enunciated over and over again by the Roches

bravery, honesty, generosity, compassion…………..love

over music which has a climactic, swinging, rocking to and fro movement. Yes its sexy!

Philip Glass – Songs From Liquid Days Amazon UK
Philip Glass – Songs From Liquid Days Amazon USA

Philip Glass – Glassworks

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Classical music, Glassworks, Music review, Philip Glass, Philip Glass Ensemble

Romantic tone poems, lush and lyrical

Glassworks is a beautiful thing, gentler and more reflective than the vibrant, glittering repetitions which are typically associated with Philip Glass.

In Glassworks, only 2 of the pieces, Floe – like a first sudden moment at the start of a tropical dawn chorus – and the brass section sax rich shining Rubric, have the fierce edges. The other 4 pieces are more simple, flowing, watery.

There’s a typically Glass like circling quality to the whole CD – the opening track ‘Opening’ simply keyboards, for all the world a whisper away from the slow movement of one of the great Romantic piano composers, is echoed again in ‘Closing’, where the piece has become more textured by a chamber orchestra taking it up.

Glass’s typical repetitions, small builds and diminishings don’t feel meaningless in any way, there’s something really satisfying about being held in a structure which changes slowly. ‘Opening’ has the lovely muted grey violet quality of dusk.

Floe starts plangently, softly, and then explodes into edgy texture, rushing piccolo, sax, horns, its like a thousand cicadas wiring up for the day, and there’s something very thrilling about it. Just as you think your nerve endings can take no more of the texture and vibrancy, the track settles back into a breathing space for itself and then whirls off again to its resolved climax

Islands moves back into something more flowing and haunting, slightly melancholic, even a little menacing, with strings in a minor key, odd snatches of melody which feel as if they belong to ‘Psycho’ or ‘North by Northwest’!

Rubric, is the most jazzy, riffy of all the pieces. I found myself responding to it in that head nodding way of marking the rhythm that often seems to happen when people listen to jazz!

Facades is simply beautiful. It probably has the most shifting melody going more quickly to new places, melancholy and soulful, strings and sax, played sweetly and sadly.

An expanded version of this 1990 album has been re-issued with several additional tracks, which does exist as an mp3 – I only have this, shorter album as CD, so am used to its more contained musical shape. The expanded version does have a much more appealing cover pic though (illustrated here)  Unless you were a Glass Fan you really might be offput by the unappealing brown cover replete with Glass a scowling. It says ‘Don’t Buy Me!’

The tracks on this version reviewed here are:
1. Opening 2. Floe 3. Islands 4. Rubric 5. Facades 6. Closing

Glassworks Amazon UK
Glassworks Amazon UK

Philip Glass – Smith Quartet

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Classical music, Minimalism, Music review, Philip Glass, Smith Quartet

Ravished by Smiths’ Glass Works!,

I love Philip Glass’ music like I love the air I breathe. I have had the Kronos Quartet CD for these pieces for some time, which does not include the first quartet – the most unsettling in many ways, the most dissonent.

I recently went to a concert where the Smith Quartet – whom I was unfamiliar with, played all 5 of the Quartets (Glass has written 8, but i believe he withdrew 3 of them as not being works he is satisfied with, so are not available on disc or mp3)

Any half way decent live concert will of course hold much more than a recording – the intensity of collective experience, what happens when musicians, music, audience connect and the energy, focus and presence of all continuously build the experience. That concert was extraordinary. Glass’ music often feels as if inhabits my body, I feel it, like breath, like blood, within bone, transformational. Indeed, at that concert, strangers turned to us in the interval, overwhelmed, as we were, saying words like ‘transforming, spiritual, beyond description’

This 5 years old recording cannot of course equal the live event, but it certainly points the way to it. There is a great intensity, passion, inhabiting of the music in the Smiths’ playing, so i find it hard in some ways to sit still with this, the spiralling, dynamic quality of the music as it coils and uncoils, expands and condenses within this listener’s body. Salute, Smiths!

I am now busily investigating what else the Smiths have recorded – Different Trains and am looking forward to hearing how this compares to the version I already have Different Trains / Electric Counterpoint

Smith Quartet – Philip Glass