Glass: Piano Works

Album review

Pianist Jenny Lin has recorded a great diversity of piano music over the years, but in mid-career, she seems to have emerged as a champion of Philip Glass, touring with the composer and making several recordings. The keyboard music of Glass has never been a terribly common facet of his output, which seems to require the sensory envelopment of large forms, but Lin does it justice. The result here is an attractive sampling, following on the grand success of her performances of the composer's Etudes, and beautifully recorded by her label, Steinway & Sons. She is sensitive to the development of Glass' musical language, seemingly entering into the composer's mind as he pushed and pulled at his basic minimalist arpeggiations. The pieces here range chronologically from 1979 (Mad Rush, written for an appearance by the Dalai Lama in New York) to 2017 (Distant Figure -- Passacaglia for solo piano), with the centerpiece being Metamorphosis. This five-movement work was abstracted and arranged by Glass from his music for the 1988 film The Thin Blue Line, and it's an effective suite that builds from simple textures to syncopations and big dramatic gestures of the kind Glass was beginning to develop at the time. Nowhere is the music technically difficult, but to bring it to life is not simple, and that's what Lin accomplishes here.

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