CD review: Philip Glass Concerto Project 4

Philip Glass

Concerto Project Vol.4

Tim Fain (violin)

Wendy Sutter (cello)

Dennis Russell Davies (piano/conductor)

Residente Orkest / The Hague Philharmonic

Jurjen Hempel (Double Concerto)

Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra (Tirol Concerto)

The concerto has become a mainstay in Philip Glass's oeuvre.  There have been some stand out entries in the series that began with the 1987 First Violin Concerto, but there have also been some distinctly cut-and-paste jobs that seem content to replicate many much imitated Glassisms.  I'd say the two that appear in volume four of Orange Mountain Music's Philip Glass Concerto Project fit somewhere between these two extremes; both the Double Concerto for violin and cello and the Tirol Concerto for piano have attractions and problems.

Written and premièred in 2010, the Double Concerto owes its existence to a commission from Nederlands Dans Theater for a dance piece.  Its structure is very similar to Glass's recent Violin Concerto No.2 'American Four Seasons', in that it places episodes for the solo instruments between movements with orchestra.  The first of these accompanied movements closely recalls the toe-tapping pulse of the Second Violin Concerto, though it's the duet interludes that prove the most interesting.  But it isn't all as successful.  There aren't many of the alluring harmonic sequences that Glass has come up in recent works; rather, there's some quite plain instrumental writing and homogenised orchestration.  It's a shame not to report a more engaging work, as the combination of violin and cello is a perfect fit for Glass's dark hues and in Tim Fain and Wendy Sutter he has a terrific pair of soloists.

Glass's music has always sounded good on the piano.  The solo piano introduction to the Tirol Concerto (2000) brings a warm remembrance of Opening from the seminal Glassworks album.  It then rushes off on a jolly path that I'm not quite so sure about, but regular Glass collaborator Dennis Russell Davies treads a fine line in the piano part between jaunty and weighty that adds some depth.  The problem, though, is the second of the three movements.  At 16'31”, it's almost three times as long as the first or last movements and Glass's variations on his theme simply aren't interesting enough to sustain the duration.  At half the length, it might have balanced with the rest of the work.  As it stands, it just plods on and on like minimalist muzak.  I'm afraid I'd lost interest before the jovial stomp through the finale.

This review originally appeared at Musicweb International.

Wendy Sutter plays Glass's First Cello Concerto

Philip Glass

Concerto for cello for orchestra No.1 

Wendy Sutter (cello)

Orchestra of the Americas

Dante Anzolini

Orange Mountain Music 0076

There was a time when the traditional form of the concerto was an anathema to the pared back language of minimalism.  The two big beasts of the first wave of minimalism who are still in the public eye, Philip Glass and Steve Reich, came up with titles as spare as their music: Music in the Shape of a Square; Music for 18 Musicians; Music in Twelve Parts; etc., etc.  Both graduated to more poetic titles, but Reich never fell back on the forms of old.  Glass did, though, and he's now on his ninth symphony and second each of concertos for violin, piano and cello.  But as he's shoehorned his hugely distinctive sound into these traditional structures, the original intensity of the style has been diluted and replaced with something altogether more conventional.

Glass's own label, Orange Mountain Music, gives us their second recording of Glass's Cello Concerto No.1 after a recording by the work's first interpreter, Julian Lloyd Webber, appeared in OMM's Glass Concerto Project series (OMM 0014).  There it was coupled with Glass's Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists and Orchestra; here we get only the 31 minutes of the Cello Concerto with no filler – not much music for a full priced disc.  Richard Guérin's sleeve notes don't mention why this concerto is numbered No.1, being mainly concerned with the performance history of the work since its composition in 2001, but Glass's website reveals it's because a second is to be premièred in 2012 and will be based on music from Glass's Naqoyqatsi soundtrack.

As for this first concerto, it begins well with a darkly shifting sequence of chords ground out by the cello: a weightier sound than usual from Glass and one which promises something a little different.  But come the first orchestral tutti and we're into fairly generic Glass territory.  The material of the second movement is brooding in a way that Glass does very well, but the variations that follow do outstay their welcome.  The finale has a certain swagger to it, but comes to an abrupt halt in a way that suggests Glass doesn't really know where his material is heading.

I've not had a chance to hear OMM's first recording of the concerto, so cannot compare Wendy Sutter's performance against Lloyd Webber's.  She does make the best case for the solo part with her dark and intense tone and faultless technique, though she's too prominent in the mix and the orchestra's contribution tends to fall away into the background.  On paper, though, there's no reason to choose this disc over the earlier OMM one, as that release was double the length and I suspect only Glass completists are going to want Sutter's new recording.  A shame, because she's clearly an appealing instrumentalist able to enliven a fairly dull piece of music.

This review originally appeared at Musicweb-International.