Philip Glass – 77 years young, fresh from a major tour of his opera Einstein on the Beach, written for his Philip Glass Ensemble, and basking in the success of The Trial, his new opera for Music Theatre Wales – is now travelling Europe with a PGE retrospective. He founded the group in 1968, but this is no exercise in nostalgia. Such is the vibrant, pulsing charge of the music, the feel is emphatically of the moment.
Glass and music director Michael Riesman, both on keyboards, were flanked by two further keyboardists, with a trio of winds – varying from piccolo to flute across the saxophone range – squaring the ensemble’s circle of instruments. They limbered up in the Cologne section of The CIVIL warS, written for Robert Wilson’s multi-composer epic commissioned for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Dance No 9 was followed by two of Music in 12 Parts and The Grid, from the score for Koyaanisqatsi. Godfrey Reggio’s film was perceived as the equivocation of the Hopi Indian word meaning “life out of balance”, yet, for the listener, the way Glass plays with the constituent elements of rhythm and harmony has a recalibrating effect. Façades, conceived for Koyaanisqatsi but featured on the album Glassworks instead, is certainly mesmeric.
Throughout the evening, the voice of Lisa Bielawa, pinging out solfége syllables with bell-like clarity, had its own brilliant impact, contrasting with the intricate arpeggiation of the keyboards and the shifting variations. The rippling chromatic scales of the encore, Field/Spaceship from Einstein on the Beach, brought a climactic and joyous reassertion of Glass’s genius.
• At the Anvil Basingstoke on 12 November. Box office: 01256 844244.
