Glass Double Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra (UK Premiere)

[Bryn]

Oh dear! Applause after the first movement. Perhaps they hoped it was all over.

[ahinton]

Oh dear! Applause after the first movement. Perhaps they hoped it was all over.

!!! Perhaps they really thought that it was all over - and those who banged their hands together probably also felt in need of the kind of fillip that can be provided only by a glass of a double something or other...

[DracoM]

To my ears, Glass is so unbelievably predictable - makes his own cliches and then sticks to them ad nauseam. I rarely write this, but honestly I hated it.
I feel so sorry for any orchestra having to play it. Pretty instant cue for sleep.

[Pulcinella]

Oh dear! Applause after the first movement. Perhaps they hoped it was all over.

As there was in the afternoon live relay from Salford in the Walton violin concerto.
But there I think that the applause was genuine!


Like Draco though, I found this Glass concert very tedious stuff indeed, and gave up partway through the second half.

[ahinton]

Here's an extract - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWm-lgjaxZ4 - some might suppose that the music starts some way beyond this but I wouldn't hold my breath.

I note that "Comments are disabled for this video". Just as well, I guess...

You could get Argerich and Pollini to play it and it wold still induce ennui in the eardrum (though not in the brain, since none of it would travel that far). Well, OK, you couldn't get them to play it, of course, but if you could...

[ahinton]

[deleted: duplicate - which is perhaps ironical in the circumstances...]

[richardfinegold]

[deleted: duplicate - which is perhaps ironical in the circumstances...]

[parkepr]

I quite liked it... and loved the encore. I've also waited 20+ years to hear Itaipu in the flesh and loved it. Each to their own!!

[Richard Barrett]

I'm always prepared to give PG a chance because he has written some interesting things, although admittedly not for a long and lengthening time. So I listened to this concerto, and...

His orchestration still hasn't got past the first chapter of the textbook. The piano parts are embarrassingly rudimentary for players of this calibre. The musical material and the form are simplistic and unmemorable. And the whole is overlaid with an aimless pseudo-expressive "romanticism", absence of which used to be one of the more attractive qualities of Glass's music. No doubt plenty of people liked it and there's room in the world (I hope) for an infinite variety of music. But I wonder how anyone could get a sense of fulfilment out of writing such a thing.

edit: while I'm here, I was listening recently to another "minimalistic" piano concerto, that by Howard Skempton, in the premiere broadcast recording played (beautifully) by John Tilbury and (not so beautifully) the BBCSSO, with Ilan Volkov conducting. IMO it's charming, concise and surprising where Glass's is bombastic, sprawling and predictable.

[ahinton]

I'm always prepared to give PG a chance because he has written some interesting things, although admittedly not for a long and lengthening time. So I listened to this concerto, and...

His orchestration still hasn't got past the first chapter of the textbook. The piano parts are embarrassingly rudimentary for players of this calibre. The musical material and the form are simplistic and unmemorable. And the whole is overlaid with an aimless pseudo-expressive "romanticism", absence of which used to be one of the more attractive qualities of Glass's music. No doubt plenty of people liked it and there's room in the world (I hope) for an infinite variety of music. But I wonder how anyone could get a sense of fulfilment out of writing such a thing.

edit: while I'm here, I was listening recently to another "minimalistic" piano concerto, that by Howard Skempton, in the premiere broadcast recording played (beautifully) by John Tilbury and (not so beautifully) the BBCSSO, with Ilan Volkov conducting. IMO it's charming, concise and surprising where Glass's is bombastic, sprawling and predictable.

I can't disagree with most of that (except that I don't know the Skempton). Yes, rudimentary orchestration and even more rudimentary piano writing of simplistic and unmemorable material does make one wonder "how anyone could get a sense of fulfilment out of writing such a thing" which, whilst it requires expenditure of physical efforts and patience to get the notes down on paper (or computer or whatever), seems a bizarre way of spending one's time when the results are capable of conveying so little of substance and so much of an impression of complacent contentment with killing time. You write of an "aimless pseudo-expressive "romanticism"" which I find hard to identify in this stuff; aimless, for sure, in both sense, i.e. not only in that it never comes from or goes anywhere or has any sense of purposeful direction but also that the "composer"'s "aims" in the very act of writing it seem wilfully absent. I can't find anything even "pseudo-expressive" in this material because, to my ears, it seems not even to want to make the effort to express anything, genuinely or falsely; as to "Romanticism", once again it's not, to me, even fake Romanticism but just a bunch of scarcely varied emptinesses strung together for no apparent reason whose results strike me as entirely emotionless. OK, I've heard only the extract posted on YT but I have no reason to assume that listening to the remainder would contain anything to reverse this profoundly depressing and dispiriting impression.

I'm no fan of the Labeque sisters but I agree that this is way, way beneath them and I'm surprised that they've bothered to do it; perhaps the relatively minimal amount of efforts required of them was well rewarded by the fees. Just imagine frères Kontarsky being asked to waste their valuable time with it!

[Nick Armstrong]

To my ears, Glass is so unbelievably predictable - makes his own cliches and then sticks to them ad nauseam. I rarely write this, but honestly I hated it.
I feel so sorry for any orchestra having to play it. Pretty instant cue for sleep.

I've hesitated to advance my views amid all the recent hoo-hah about him, but (insofar as I've been able to stand any of it, which I have to say isn't much) it's all confirmed that I'm very much a Glass more-than-half-empty sort of person...

[ahinton]

I've hesitated to advance my views amid all the recent hoo-hah about him, but (insofar as I've been able to stand any of it, which I have to say isn't much) it's all confirmed that I'm very much a Glass more-than-half-empty sort of person...

A Glass can be half-empty or less only if it had previously been fuller.

[Serial_Apologist]

A Glass can be half-empty or less only if it had previously been fuller.

Not necessarily, of course, but in this instance I'll give you 6 out of 10.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

A Glass can be half-empty or less only if it had previously been fuller.

I think it has been - I'm another vetrosceptic, but the works he produced up to Einstein showed much greater skill than anything of his that I've encountered written in the past thirty years.

[Serial_Apologist]

I think it has been - I'm another vetrosceptic, but the works he produced up to Einstein showed much greater skill than anything of his that I've encountered written in the past thirty years.

Don't you think that limitation might be endemic to Minimalism, though? A trap awaiting the would-be progressive anti-Third Viennese Schoolist? Now, serialism's altogether a different matter in terms of the options it has afforded.