Philip Glass Plays … Philip Glass

This coming Friday Orange Mountain Music will release Philip Glass Solo, a seven-track album of composer Philip Glass playing seven of his compositions for solo piano at the age of 84. Glass recorded these performances at his home in 2020. It would be fair to say that this collection contributes to the composer’s reflections on his past achievements. As many probably expect, Amazon.com has already created a Web page for processing pre-orders.

Some readers may recall by now that my experiences of listening to performances of Glass’ compositions go all the way back to January of 1970, when the Philip Glass Ensemble gave its first major performance in the downstairs recital hall of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. I wrote about that occasion back in April of 2019, when Orange Mountain released its two-CD set 50 Years of the Philip Glass Ensemble. As might be guessed from the title, none of Glass’ solo piano compositions were included on that release.

My first encounter with his piano music came when Edition Peters published Waltzes by 25 Contemporary Composers. Glass was one of those composers (the contents were alphabetically ordered by last name); and his contribution was “Modern Love Waltz.” True to the spirit of the title, I fell in love with the piece the first time I played it (possibly because it was so compatible with my own limited dexterity). As a result, my own collection of recordings includes a generous supply of his compositions for solo piano.

The new album has seven tracks and a duration of somewhat less than an hour. It includes four of the five “Metamorphosis” compositions. It begins with “Opening,” the first track on the Glassworks album. This is followed by “Mad Rush;” and the final track is “Truman Sleeps,” composed for the soundtrack of The Truman Show. I am not sure why Glass omitted “Metamorphosis 4;” but I am happy enough to have recordings of it by Nicolas Horvath and Valentina Lisitsa. My writing about both of those recordings took place during my tenure with Examiner.com, which did not take the trouble to archive them!

I would not venture to claim that any of the tracks on Philip Glass Solo rise above versions previously recorded by Glass or anyone else. Rather, I take some comfort in the idea that, by the time you are in your eighties, you can do anything within the scope of your capabilities that you damned well please. I suspect that many that follow his work figured that his etudes would be his “last hurrah” as both composer and performer. I guess those etudes have been keeping him in shape well enough for him to revisit seven of his earlier efforts. My own eighties are still a few years in the future, but I sure hope that my writing chops at those advanced years will be as fruitful as Glass’ keyboard technique!