LOS ANGELES — After Einstein on the Beach, Philip Glass‘ 1976 succès d’estime, the composer had to work two more years as a cab driver. The opera helped make his music-theater career but left him in deep financial debt. Composing music for film, beginning with 1977’s North Star, about sculptor Mark di Suvero, may have saved him. In 1982, his score for Koyaanisqatsi showed the power of his hypnotic arpeggios, repetitive structures, and overlapping rhythmic figures when set against a welter of images.
Subsequently, Glass’ music proved so durably versatile in a variety of genres that he became one of the giants in the industry. His gripping, cello-driven work in The Secret Agent (1996) led to Oscar-nominated best original scores for Kundun (1997), The Hours (2002), and Notes on a Scandal (2006). His soundtrack for The Illusionist, also in 2006, imbued that mesmerizing film with mystery and magic.
There was plenty of both, maybe too much, at Walt Disney Concert Hall on March 31 when pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque gave the U.S. premiere of the Cocteau Trilogy, suites from Glass’ three 1990s operas based on Jean Cocteau’s classic films Orphée, La Belle et la Bête, and Les Enfants terribles, arranged for two pianos by the composer’s longtime collaborator Michael Riesman.
Since no clips from the films were shown — visuals that inspired both Glass’ score and, according to Marielle in an interview, images that inspired her playing as well — the audience had to deal with a darkened hall in which it was challenging to follow the program booklet. But not knowing the name of each of the 30 pieces, much less where one started and the next began, was probably fine. With Glass, it’s best to just stay present and go with the flow.
A large chandelier hung over the two nested pianos. Before the pianists took the stage, Cocteau (1889-1963) himself gave a spoken intro in French, with no surtitles, his voice reportedly was taken from radio broadcasts. Like a previous concert in the so-called LA Phil “Body and Sound” festival, which offered an ill-considered light show for Scriabin’s Prometheus, Poem of Fire, this one also went in for some questionable theatricality. While the chandelier suggested the gothic atmosphere of La Belle et la Bête, it basically remained static, its vertical white lights occasionally changing to red, offering something to focus on as Glass’ repeated shifting rhythmic motifs put one in an hypnotic state.
Along with the program, each audience member was given a scent card. That’s right — a scent card. The idea, originally planned for Prometheus, then scrapped after its trial run in San Francisco, came courtesy of Maison Francis Kurkdjian, the luxury fragrance house based in Paris. These “olfactory accords,” as the “perfume creator” Kurkdjian termed them in the notes to the folding scent-card, consisted of three smell strips: one for Orphée, recalling “the smoke of a cold incense”; a second for La Belle, “a fresh rose”; and, for Les Enfants, a smell evoking “the warmth of a sweet treat.” Unless one had a specific personal memory triggered, however, this gimmick was unlikely to conjure a Proustian “madeleine moment,” so the concept essentially amounted to a Maison Kurkdjian ad insert.
These distractions — the chandelier, scents — seemed to imply that there may be such a thing as too much Glass. This prompts the question as to whether one-composer concerts actually work. With little outside stylistic contrast — even a night of all six Bach Partitas can start to tire — where do the sparks come from? Listening to the waves of driving rhythms with occasional respites of Ravelian lyrical warmth in Glass’ Cocteau Trilogy, I imagined a mixed program of Fauré’s Dolly Suite followed by the drama of Les Enfants. And perhaps a second half with Orphée followed by Debussy’s wartime En blanc et noir.
That said, Katia Labèque, 75, and her sister Marielle, 73, remain effective advocates for Glass. Coming late to his music by way of Messiaen, Berio, Ligeti, and Boulez, the duo were unsurprisingly seductive in eliciting the French romantic qualities of Glass’ scores. (The composer lived in France and studied with Nadia Boulanger for a couple of years.) They effectively conveyed the rich colors of “Le Pavillion” from La Belle and “Orphée et la Princesse” from Orphée, one of Glass’ most tender creations. The Labèque sisters’ seamless coordination and elegant dynamic control — crucial elements of Glass’ aesthetic — never flagged, whether in the poignant “Terrible Interlude” or the driving intensity of “Paul’s End,” both from Les Enfants.
The duo returned for one high-wire encore: the breakneck finale of Glass’ densely textured Four Movements for Two Pianos from 2008.
In the past year, a number of Glass scores have been performed, including Opera Parallèle’s La Belle et la Bête at UC Berkeley’s Cal Performances, in which live singers replaced the actor’s voices. Glass turns 90 on Jan. 31, 2027, and the LA Phil has scheduled another all-Glass concert featuring his Symphony No. 15, Lincoln, for March 12-13, 2027. Glass withdrew the world premiere from the Kennedy Center in protest last January. It’s been rescheduled for July 5 at Tanglewood as part of the U.S. 250th anniversary, with Karen Kamensek conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
