Philip Glass Solo

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Pundits say tonality was stretched to its limits around 1900, and that atonal music—music without a key center—was the way of the future. Arnold Schoenberg led the way with his system of 12-tone composition, and that complex method found favor with many composers, most notably Alban Berg, whose music, along with Schoenberg's, is performed to this day, especially Berg's operas Wozzeck and Lulu. Of course, plenty of composers ignored that structured keyless future, the impressionists especially, but also those who rejected any key structure at all, typified by Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage. Whatever technique was used, the consensus was that tonal music, outside of popular music and jazz, was considered dead.

Beginning with La Monte Young in 1958 however, tonality returned, but in an entirely new manner, with minimal application of the traditional techniques of harmony and counterpoint. Other composers like Steve Reich, Moondog, and Terry Riley, to name a few, arrived on the scene, and their minimal compositional techniques began to find larger audiences. Inevitably their music was dubbed Minimalism.

No composer has had as much influence on Minimalist as Philip Glass, and masterpieces like Music in Twelve Parts and Einstein on the Beach firmly placed him at the moment's forefront. Now Glass, hard to believe, is 86 years old, and without deigning to call this latest release the composer's "greatest hits," it should not offend anyone to call it a retrospective.  This time, we have the privilege of hearing Glass playing the works himself. Some were originally composed for piano, while others are transcribed from larger works. With the composer at the keyboard, though, the performances here may be deemed definitive and provide us with a wonderful musical portrait of the composer. ©  Anthony Fountain/Qobuz