Customer Reviews

Solo Piano: Philip Glass

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

 

 

These pieces are the songs from the Solo Piano cd. Perfect for intermediate students, they work great as finger exercises as well. The songs increase in difficulty as the book goes on. My teacher was thrilled when I brought this book in to my lessons.

For anyone who has wanted to play Philip Glass piano music, this is the only thing I know of available. The music itself is excellent. Glass composed this music in his usual minimalist style, and this music offers the deceptively simple set of the Metamorphosis series, along with Mad Rush and Wichita Sutra Vortex. Some of the rhythms are reasonably challenging for many piano students, as is the repetition in the left hand (killer on the out of shape fingers, though!). My biggest complaint, however, is the book itself does not lend itself very well to easy page turning. The multitude of repeats throughout the music makes it necessary to go through a lot of page turning. To make a page stay open is nearly an impossible task. It's almost necessary to make a copy of the music just to have the music in a format where the pages can easily be turned.

If you already know and like the minimalist style from Philip Glass, you'll have more chances on liking the musics on this album.
It's really a mood thing. Sometimes you will play and love it, sometimes you'll just get bored over it. That's also valid for listeners.
Some people will love it, some people will get sleepy.
Still, a great aquisition for intermediate piano students.

This book is spectacular. Philip Glass is a very wonderful composer and this book is very accessible to play. With just a small amount of practice; mediocre pianists can sound great. Very clean and easy to read.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!

These are great pieces, most of them easily played by the beginning-to-intermediate student of piano. There are some tricky counterpoints in one or two spots that are troublesome, but most or these pieces are repetitive and easy to learn. The difficulty lies in a lack of fingering instructions or dynamics. One of my favorite books to play, however, that said.
As a side note -- if you happen to be a Battlestar Galactica fan and that's how you ended up here, yes, the piece played in "Valley of Darkness" is included in this book.

ever since i saw philip glass play a mesmerising solo piano concert at the southbank centre in london, i've been keeping an eye out for any transcriptions of his work.
i have long been a fan of his soundtracks since the first time i saw koyaanasqatsi.
i play all the pieces in this book and i found the best way to deal with the frequent page turning is to memorise them.
it helps to listen to his recording of these works as well.
you don't need a formidable technique to play these pieces but watch out for rsi/oos with all those repetitive hand movements.

If you can play arpeggios worth a cent, you can play this flawlessly in one to two practice sessions per piece. The pieces consist of only a few lines of music each, which are repeated ad nauseum throughout the songs. It's an interesting style that provides good background music, but kind of grates on the ears after a while.

I agree with everything previous reviewers have written about these pieces. They are repetative, and ad nauseum, is a good term. They are easy to tackle in one to two sittings, but the real value is how well they limber up my fingers for some more serious playing. More fun than the usual scales and chord inversions. After a few minutes of working these pieces Mozart and Beethoven pieces run more smoothly.

I enjoy playing this music and find it relaxing. It isn't terribly difficult to play, so if you are looking for very challenging music look elsewhere. Some people complain that most of the music is the same with a few changes here and there with each piece, but they forget that its a series called "metamorphosis". Play the music, feel the changes as they come, appreciate those changes and understand that each piece is related to the others inherently because that's what the composer intended.