Simone Dinnerstein - Circles - Piano Concertos By Glass + Bach

Glass s music, however, came off as indeed farsighted. Originally a pure modern contrapuntalist, he has come to resemble Bruckner, himself a master of counterpoint. Glass s symphonies there are now 11 have been the primary means for him to try out new uses for vertical harmony and an increasingly expansive expressive language... The new concerto is close in form and style to the current symphonies, especially the excellent No. 11 which premiered earlier this year. In concept, the concerto is a companion to the Concerto for Two Pianos, heard from the New York Philharmonic last week, and likewise an embodiment of Glass s stated interest in putting the piano into conversation rather than opposition with the orchestra. In method, the piece was full of new ideas. There were the familiar rocking tremolos and repeated cadences, but there was also music that had an atypical sense of uncertainty chord changes and harmonic rhythms that not only moved in surprising directions but that drifted off without coming to the resolute orderliness that marks Glass. Many of the cadences were new in his work as well, his insistent language using a new vocabulary. There are four cadenzas interspersed among the three movements, and while they don t share the heroic profiles of the common concerto, they did display Dinnerstein s artistry. Glass wrote this work specifically for her, after hearing her play his work and Schubert in his home, and his own thinking and playing were clearly in deep sympathy with each other. The cadenzas are beautiful, expressive music inside a concerto that itself is beautiful and dramatically expressive, the shape pointing toward heightened moments of realization and resolution. In the performance, the feeling was romantic in the way of revealing personal truths, and Dinnerstein sounded deeply touched by the music flowing through her hands. This was a marvelous performance of a marvelous new work. -New York Classical Review