Glass

Another Look at Harmony - Part IV

Choir of the 21st Century / Howard Williams with

Christopher Bowers-Broadbent erg Somm Cêleste Series 0 SOMMCD072 (60' • DOD) Glass's choral work offers peaks and troughs of monumental proportions

Its title may suggest the kind of textbook treatise Glass's onetime teacher Vincent Persichetti may have written, but Another Look at Harmony (1975-77) has played a pivotal role in the composer's stylistic development, signalling a shift from the linear thread of Music in Twelve Pans (1971-74) to the vertical structures of Einstein on the Beach (1975-76). Indeed, significant parts of the latter work were based on it and, unusually for Glass's music from the mid-1970s, can be performed by more-or-less conventional forces (SATB and organ), features full choral polyphony, and makes extensive use of chord patterns and progressions for the first time.

Admittedly the work takes a while to get into its stride, but Glass's gradually expanding and contracting sequences eventually generate musical peaks and troughs of quite monumental proportions. Such moments are heard especially during the closing sections of this recording, made by the impressive Choir of the 21st Century under Howard Williams. Groups of two are persistently set against threes and sixes, creating a dizzying pulsing effect, and underpinned by Bowers-Broadbent's solid but unobtrusive accompaniment. Such musical chiaroscuros evoke the sound of later Glass works such as Koyaanisgatsi (1982) and Akhnaten (1983).

This recording arguably lacks the kinetic energy, edge and intensity heard in the 1989 recording by Western Wind and Michael Riesman (Orange Mountain), but makes up for it in terms of a more measured and controlled interpretation. Whatever the case, Glass's music from around this time is certainly worth another look. Pwyll ap Siem