Customer Reviews

Philip Glass Soundtracks

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With all due respect to InlandEmpire's opinion, Glass' soundtracks are not filled with "unimaginative doodles". To characterize them in that way is to reveal a lack of understanding of how soundtracks are written and work with a film. Quite the contrary, Glass' soundtracks work particularly well with film because they allow the filmmaker to move the film in a direction using Glass' music to add color, depth and pacing. It is no accident that so many directors want a Glass score, and that so many others cut their film using Philip Glass music as a temp score. Anyway, I do agree that this is an excellent sampling, and is very well played. Other than Glass himself, it is unlikely that anyone other than Riesman has a better insight into the music. I would imagine that hooked by these performances, listeners will want to explore the full soundtracks sampled here. Enjoy!

I recently heard Mr. Riesman perform a piano transcription of Glass's soundtrack for "Dracula" in New York before a projection of the movie. He transcribed it from the original score written for string quartet. It was masterful, technically complex and full of appropriate emotion.

That would describe Mr. Riesman's performance on this CD as well. I don't know of anyone who can perform Glass on the piano as well as he. Glass never "doodles" as one reviewer has stated, and this recording never suffers dips in complexity or execution. Played with guts and emotion, precision and freedom, each piece is defined but creates a most wonderfully coherent whole. Please consider adding this recording to your collection.

Philip Glass songs are better on solo piano than they are with a bunch of other instruments. Although the full ensemble recordings work for dramatic purposes while watching the movie, the solo piano sounds better when listening to the music by itself. Same thing for the Hours solo piano. Riesman obviously knows the music. I just think that the unflattering close up picture of his face was a bad idea for the album cover. Its like, why not a picture of him playing the piano or something? Why did they think it was a good idea to just put some boring picture of his face, with what appears to be an airport corridor in the background? Seriously, does this encourage the unsuspecting shopper to buy this recording? I don't think so, because, see, I think the picture of his face just has nothing to do with the piano music, which - correct me if I'm wrong - is what the recording is supposed to be all about. I mean, am I wrong?! Just put a picture of the dam piano on the cover already...is this so hard to do? With all the technology available now, is it really that f-ing hard?!

A really good Philip Glass selection performed on the piano. "Primacy of Number" has a profoundly different impact on the piano than it does on strings.

Philip Glass' manufacturing line produces way too much soundtrack albums. Each one usually contains one decent tune and other than that lots of unimaginative doodles.
Riesman, who already released excellent piano transcriptions of Glass' Dracula and The Hours, picked the best of those soundtracks tracks, and he performs them energetically. Great album.

I'm a big fan of Philip Glass, particularly his soundtracks. This guy Riesman has somehow managed to take the "best" of his soundtracks and turn them into tedious drivel. Sad. This is truly one of the most boring contemporary "classical" recordings I own.