Customer Reviews

Philip Glass: Portrait

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was given this CD as a gift and not being a big fan of Philip Glass I expected his usual "knock-knock, who's there; knock-knock, who's there; ock-knock, who's there" kind of music. I was very pleasantly surprised with this "late period" Glass music. It's a very mellow and beautiful record. The sonorities that Ms. Dubeau and La Pieta are able to bring to this music are amazing. I am whole heartedly recommending this to anyone who likes good, mellow, evocative music.

This CD was playing while I was in the record store and I just had to buy it. Beautifully played and with excellent sonics, this CD gives you a digest of Philip Glass' latest works without having to buy all the recent albums. The playing is uniformly good - the music if mainly for strings, with the Hours suite adding harp, piano and celesta. It is also mainly based on music for movies : Cocteau's "Beauty and the beast", "The Hours", "The secret agent" and "Mishima". Also included are music for the play "Company", "Echorus" and "Closing" from the album 'Glassworks'.

It is typical Glass throughout, there are no surprises here - all you need to do is listen to it and be enveloped in his particular, hypnotic, sound world. Even people who don't know much about Glass should be able to like this album - it's easily accessible to all, not spiky or dissonant. You can either sit down and listen to his signature arpeggiated violins, or play it as background music while ironing shirts. Either way, this is an excellent disc, and a great introduction to Glass for those who are new to him.

After reading the other reviews and the description, I was expecting a radical re-imagining of Philip Glass' work. Instead, the work is a quite good, but quite literal, representation of several pieces in the Glass canon already presented in other recordings. The recording is good and the pieces are played well, but if you already own these pieces, you will not find much new here.

I wish that the performers had either taken more liberties with the arrangements to bring new life to them or had picked more obscure works that hadn't already been recorded several times, that would have made this a more compelling record.

This recording is recommended for those new to Glass or without a lot of his recordings or those who are complete-ists (and who will buy it anyway).

With this CD, La Pieta has admirably brought forth Glass' passion and intuitivily interpreted the intricate details of each piece. My personal favorite on this CD is the Secret Agent (track 9). The fluid lines and plusing tempo Le Pieta takes with this arrangement makes the piece breathtaking, and I can listen to it repeatedly with the same conviction. Thank you. Your CD is my weekend morning santuary.

Glass is being recycled so much these days, we have already heard these songs on several different recordings... and sometimes even with different names. Maybe if the songs were performed on a sitar, and alp horn, or a banjo it would be a new angle or perspective on the music. Instead, its just more violin and piano stuff. YAWN. ZZZZZZ. SNORE.

Angele Dubeau is a virtuoso. She can play all type of music with her group La Pieta. They are wonderful.