NEW YORK — Philip Glass, 88, is best performed by those who haven’t known a world without him. One of them is Gustavo Dudamel, who conducted Glass’ Symphony No. 11 on May 22 with the New York Philharmonic, soon to be his, at David Geffen Hall. Four more of them comprise Brooklyn Rider, which played Glass’ complete string quartets over three concerts at the unlikely venue of The Cloisters, the first installment of which was May 21. Both were huge audience successes for which the composer was present (and, at the Philharmonic, saw him accompanied by an entourage of 25).
Those who came to Glass from 1970s modernism still question the simplicity of means and compositional tropes (swirling arpeggios, etc.) that dominate his template. Others accept the template as is, especially in performances that engulf the ears without allowing one to stand back to ponder meaning. This is not music as an act of self revelation but most often exists as pure experience. Dudamel’s brand of musical ignition was perfectly suited to a symphony such as the 11th, premiered in 2017, without the add-ons of other Glass works (which can be anything from exotic instruments to David Bowie lyrics).
In any case, the 11th is a symphony that needs to be heard in person; otherwise you hear the template and not what Glass does with it. Dudamel highlighted the music’s contours and brought out the different tint of each movement, starting with the opening lower brass suggesting the darkest moments of the Wagner Ring Cycle, continuing in the second movement with what feels like barren, long-scorched earth, and concluding with the dramatic percussion interludes of the third movement. Even with Dudamel’s turbo-powered pulse, the middle of the second movement dwelled on motifs that wore out their welcome. But the overall effect was exhilarating. How could it not be with so much energy radiating from the Philharmonic in top form?
Elsewhere on the program, Stravinsky’s rhythmically vigorous Symphony in Three Movements seemed like a forerunner of sorts to Glass. The program’s needed outlier — how much chugging can you take? — came from Kate Soper. Even more than Caroline Shaw, Soper is a true composer-performer, though one unlike any I’ve ever encountered. That doesn’t mean works by her — such as Orpheus Orchestra Opus Onus for amplified speaking soprano and orchestra, commissioned and premiered on this occasion by the Philharmonic — addresses previously neglected cultural needs. Between the great Sarah Ruhl play Eurydice and Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, this territory is covered in Soper’s sung/spoken retelling of the Orpheus legend in a contemporary frame. Musically, she quotes other composers drawn to Orpheus (Monteverdi, etc.) while showing off much of what the symphonic medium can do. The Orpheus narrative is often witty and sometimes amiably bewildering, with her spoken and sung delivery that’s full of personality. But editing and focusing is needed for this to be a viable special-occasion piece.
Brooklyn Rider’s May 21 all-Glass program encompassed the Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Quartets, written between 2013 and 2022, and was full of revelations. As with his periodic collaborator Robert Wilson, the Glass aesthetic treats narrative more intuitively than logically. Gracious transitions are rarely in the mix. More often, the music just shifts gears from one module to the next, modules that, in Brooklyn Rider performances, fit together with more cumulative impact than usual, partly because the seams are blurred. Frequently re-visited tropes didn’t lose their power in these performances.
Most importantly, the Cloisters acoustics created textures suggesting that Glass has a hidden kinship with Debussy. Tempos had subtle flexibility as opposed to the click-track accuracy that was once standard with Glass (but done away with by the example of conductor Dennis Russell Davies). Past performances of the Sixth Quartet (not by Brooklyn Rider) could treat the music’s lulling ostinatos with such Zen-like neutrality as to have a dry, flat-line quality. Brooklyn Rider’s dramatic inflections made Glass’ motifs more than just pithy. Movements that once merely stopped now halted more emphatically.
One doesn’t often catch Glass brooding, but in the Eighth and Ninth Quarters he does. The Eighth has been described as “Schubertian,” which I don’t quite buy, though the music does have a lyrical expanse with motifs that don’t feel self-contained but seem to look beyond themselves into uncharacteristic places. Even the pull-the-plug ending took on a terse finality.
The Ninth Quartet, drawn from Glass’ incidental music to the Broadway King Lear that starred Glenda Jackson in 2019, dramatically departs from Glass’ usual template, projecting deep longing plus phantom sounds that are barely glimpsed before disappearing. The music vacillates between the play’s rough outer world and more ambiguous often-sinister inner world. I particularly love the quartet’s opening cello solo with pizzicato accompanying that feels both modern and archaic.
Brooklyn Rider has the range — emotionally, coloristically, technically — to encompass all such moments, as well as passages that sounded like songs without words. Further proof of the quartet’s range appeared on the “merch” table that included the group’s recording of Beethoven’s String Quartet, Op. 131: It’s a performance that closely reproduces the low-vibrato 1927 recording by the Rosé Quartet — a group that formed in 1882 and had first-hand encounters with Brahms and Mahler. Thus, Brooklyn Rider’s recording is a triumphant reclamation of lost tradition as revealed through a 21st-century lens. No wonder the group is so resourceful with Philip Glass.
