Glass for cello solo
This album consists mostly of so-called 'poems' for cello solo. It is an interesting experience, although less lush in texture than the usual symphonic works by Glass, and less moving than solo efforts such as the solo saxophone album. The album ends with several tracks (some of which not released on CD hitherto) from Powaqqatsi. All in all, this is a valuable item in a Philip Glass's afficionado's collection, but will probably be of little use to other people.
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Glass's most intense work, brilliantly performed
This is an extraordinary recording - hauntingly beautiful and deeply moving. I picked up the disk a week or so ago and can't stop listening to it. It is without question the best work Glass has released in many years. I had, to be honest, grown rather weary of the repetitive motifs that characterize so much of his work, through they once had mesmerized me, and picked up this album with some trepidation. It turned out to be a brilliant gamble.
The recording collects two pieces, the title track and "Tissues," a score written for one of his collaborative films. Long-time listeners of Glass's work will hear very familiar echoes in the latter work, which features a gently lyrical cello with either a piano or percussion offering a circular baseline. Because I've heard so much piano work from Glass, I found the movements of "Tissues" with contrapuntal percussion (#2 and #4) more interesting. But, really I think of this piece just as lagniappe, and the record would be just as strong - maybe stronger, depending on your tastes - without it. It's the title track, "Songs and Poems," that will bowl you over. The opening notes announce a work of singular intensity deeply steeped in the classical tradition, as powerful and ineffably sad as one of Schumann's lieder. It's a piece more for fans of Schubert, Dvorak, Kodaly, and late Beethoven than Reich, Riley, Nyman, and early Glass. The fifth movement alone is worth the price of admission - six emotionally devastating minutes of heart-wringing beauty that will leave you shivering in your seat.
As wonderful as Glass's composition is, the power of this recording is due in no small part to a stunningly virtuosic performance by Wendy Sutter. She is a member of Bang on a Can, and I had noted her work on several of the ensemble's recordings - she stands out particularly on several remarkable tracks on their recent CD of work by Don Byron, A Ballad for Many. Her playing here is absolutely enthralling. There are some passages here - in the fourth movement, particularly - where she evokes the warm lyricism of the late Mstislav Rostropovich. But it is Janos Starker whom Sutter most resembles: both play with a breathtakingly passionate intensity, though Sutter never lapses into the brutality that characterizes some recordings by Starker, who occasionally seems to wield his bow like a rod of correction. Sutter's sound is fantastically rich, deeply colored, and vibrant - qualities effectively represented in the intriguing cover painting by Erika Harrsch, which depicts (I imagine) the catalytic energy of art, and the power of music to heighten our perceptions to the extent that inanimate objects become invested with antic life. Play the record loud and your whole room will become saturated with the reverberations of Sutter's cello, and when it's over you will gaze around in astonishment wondering why your books are still on the shelves and how your glassware survived the emotional encounter you've just been through.
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