Skip to main content

Symphony No. 2

Philip Glass' second symphony gets off to a sombre and somewhat austere start. The first movement is mostly slow, stately, with muted colours. Its rising and falling passages put me in mind of being on board ship in a slight swell. In the second movement, a solemn beginning gives way to more urgent music, redolent for me of apprehension & anxiety. The busily pulsing third (and concluding) movement doesn't feel cut from quite the same cloth as the preceding two, and it's my least favourite part of the piece, though ny no means an outright let-down. Overall it's still a work I greatly enjoy.


The brief interlude excerpted from the chamber opera Orphée that follows the symphony on this CD is a delight, a most beguiling two and a half minutes of music (not six and a half, as the booklet notes claim). That, in turn, is followed by the 1995 'Concerto for Saxophone Quartet and Orchestra': not a composition which has firmly lodged in my memory, but when I listened to it anew yesterday it did come back to me, and I was delighted by that too. It rounds out a thoroughly satisfying and well-filled disc - which makes a sharp contrast with the ungenerous servings on some of Glass's more recent recordings on his 'official' Orange Mountain Music label.

I bought this in 1998 in Cardiff, where I was then ostensibly based, though frequently working elsewhere. Sunday afternoons I often took a leisurely look around the Waterstone's bookshop and the MVC record shop on The Hayes, this being one of several albums of works by the American minimalist composers I discovered at the latter, a sadly short-lived emporium.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

All Wrapped Up

Here's another of the compilation cassettes I bought this summer, having taken home a Denon twin-deck hi-fi cassette player from the local charity shop. All Wrapped Up is a 1983 compilation of singles by The Undertones, with Side One filled with A-sides, and B-sides on Side Two. A cassette must be the least desirable medium for such an arrangement, with a long rewind required if one just wants to hear the hits repeatedly. The Undertones were unapologetically provincial and anti-fashionable, with their songs sharply-written slices of life that pointedly avoided any mention of politics, or of the then-continuing violence in their native Derry. My favourite tracks are the obvious choices: 'Teenage Kicks', 'Jimmy Jimmy', 'Here Comes the Summer', 'My Perfect Cousin' & 'Wednesday Week'. Their later singles showed increased sophistication but lack the some of the straightforward charm of their earlier work. The B-sides, not unexpectedly, are mo
Post a Comment
Read more

In Heat

Having acquired the soubriquet "the walrus of love", Barry White thereafter became something of a figure of fun, something that misled me (and presumably others) into disregarding his music. Only within the last few years have I begun to pay it more attention. After picking up a copy of his '74 album Can't Get Enough last summer, which I loved, I sought out some of the music by his protegés Love Unlimited. From a Discogs seller I ordered well-used copies of Under the Influence of... ('73) and In Heat ('74) for only £6.25. The only unappealing thing about In Heat is its awful title. The songs and the singing are strong; the arrangements rich & warmly enveloping. As one would expect from White, the thematic focus is firmly fixed on amatory matters. The opening number 'Move Me No Mountain' (the only one on the record not written by White) offers a refreshing rebuttal to the kind of lyrical hyperbole in songs like 'Ain't No Mountain High E
Post a Comment
Read more

Bananas Are Not Created Equal

I knew Jay Berliner's name from his contributions to Van Morrison's Astral Weeks and Charles Mingus' The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady , so when I saw this curiously-titled LP at the local charity shop I was intrigued, and bought it even though I had no idea what kind of music it might contain. This was after the days when one could still buy records there for a pound apiece, but I don't think I paid more than a fiver for it. The music turned out to be an all-instrumental blend of funk, soul & jazz. Berliner's virtuoso lead guitar is only one of many attractions here. The band of first-rate session musicians behind him are all uniformly excellent too, and, crucially, sound like they're having a blast. Cornell Dupree's supporting guitar work, while less showy than Berliner's, is beautifully-judged, and the rhythm section is terrific. Arranger/conductor Wade Marcus was no slouch either, judging from the way everything comes together. Two of the funk
Post a Comment
Read more