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60 of 62 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Glass's most intense work, brilliantly performed, February 18, 2008
This is an extraordinary recording - hauntingly beautiful and deeply moving. I picked up the disk a week or so ago and can't stop listening to it. It is without question the best work Glass has released in many years. I had, to be honest, grown rather weary of the repetitive motifs that characterize so much of his work, through they once had mesmerized me, and picked up this album with some trepidation. It turned out to be a brilliant gamble.
The recording collects two pieces, the title track and "Tissues," a score written for one of his collaborative films. Long-time listeners of Glass's work will hear very familiar echoes in the latter work, which features a gently lyrical cello with either a piano or percussion offering a circular baseline. Because I've heard so much piano work from Glass, I found the movements of "Tissues" with contrapuntal percussion (#2 and #4) more interesting. But, really I think of this piece just as lagniappe, and the record would be just as strong - maybe stronger, depending on your tastes - without it. It's the title track, "Songs and Poems," that will bowl you over. The opening notes announce a work of singular intensity deeply steeped in the classical tradition, as powerful and ineffably sad as one of Schumann's lieder. It's a piece more for fans of Schubert, Dvorak, Kodaly, and late Beethoven than Reich, Riley, Nyman, and early Glass. The fifth movement alone is worth the price of admission - six emotionally devastating minutes of heart-wringing beauty that will leave you shivering in your seat.
As wonderful as Glass's composition is, the power of this recording is due in no small part to a stunningly virtuosic performance by Wendy Sutter. She is a member of Bang on a Can, and I had noted her work on several of the ensemble's recordings - she stands out particularly on several remarkable tracks on their recent CD of work by Don Byron, A Ballad for Many. Her playing here is absolutely enthralling. There are some passages here - in the fourth movement, particularly - where she evokes the warm lyricism of the late Mstislav Rostropovich. But it is Janos Starker whom Sutter most resembles: both play with a breathtakingly passionate intensity, though Sutter never lapses into the brutality that characterizes some recordings by Starker, who occasionally seems to wield his bow like a rod of correction. Sutter's sound is fantastically rich, deeply colored, and vibrant - qualities effectively represented in the intriguing cover painting by Erika Harrsch, which depicts (I imagine) the catalytic energy of art, and the power of music to heighten our perceptions to the extent that inanimate objects become invested with antic life. Play the record loud and your whole room will become saturated with the reverberations of Sutter's cello, and when it's over you will gaze around in astonishment wondering why your books are still on the shelves and how your glassware survived the emotional encounter you've just been through.
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23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gorgeous, March 11, 2008
We just listened to extended portions of this record on the radio and it is extraordinarily beautiful. We had trouble guessing what decade or century it might be from and were very surprised it was Philip Glass. The music is both lyrical and haunting, and beautifully played and recorded. Highly recommended, don't miss it if you enjoy cello.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Depth, and a very unexpected romanticism., November 30, 2008
Unlike virtually every other Glass composition to which I have been exposed, "Songs and Poems" displayed real intellectualism and honesty of a kind I have never expected from the man who produced (and continuously re-produced) "Glassworks." These compositions, while recognizably minimalist in style and form, are unusually jagged-edged and stormy--romantic, I would say, in a way very unlike Glass' usual treacle and posturing.
Sutter's command of the material really elevates and justifies its emotional content. I would have never expected it, but these pieces are not only emotionally convincing, but convincing in a gripping and agonized fashion which reflects impressively on the soloist. She is both restrained and emphatic; for the first and only time in Glass' body of work I think we have encountered real, unselfconscious command of the emotional possibilities of minimalist music. I can't over-stress Sutter's contribution to this impressive success: Her intellectual command of the material and her expressive technique have literally made the piece what it is.
It is unusual for me to compliment a composition on its emotional content, but it is so extremely unusual to see Glass write with honest and unsentimental vulnerability, depression, elevation and rage that it's all the more surprising how effectively he has carried it off. As suspicious of emotionally sensational material as I am, I have repeatedly enjoyed this recording and, in fact, enjoyed it more each time.
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~ Philip Glass
~ Kronos Quartet
~ Philip Glass
~ Philip Glass
~ Philip Glass
by Philip Glass 
