Kronos are touring, but don’t venture any closer than London (Hackney Empire, July 22). More’s the pity.
But Philip Glass is touring (and looking fit and well aged all of 73), and last Tuesday he played in Dublin, performing Études and other works for solo piano at the National Concert Hall in Dublin.
A friend saw him perform in a cathedral in (I think) Drogheda a couple of years ago. On that occasion he played the organ and had a small ensemble with him. But this was going to be Glass alone with his piano. I did wonder if his style of small, repeated sequences would work as well without the drama and weight of heavy strings, which for me is what his sound is all about.
I needn’t have worried.
Tuesday night was about as great a summer’s night as you could hope for. Earlsfort Terrace, drenched in peachy-warm evening sun, was awash with people looking cool, well dressed and tipsy in anticipation. And why wouldn’t they?
While I was queuing for a drink at the bar I heard a group behind me talk about the Glass compilation CD for sale in the foyer. I think it might have been called Greatest Hits, but they were talking about what a good name for such a compilation might be. Breaking Glass, Shattering Glass etc. I turned around and offered ‘A Glass Menagerie?’ Thankfully they found this amusing rather than intrusive. Which is nice, because nobody likes a smart arse.
Funnily enough, the audience seemed more self-consciously well dressed for the evening than Glass himself. He ambles on to the stage with a hesitant, almost bumbling, professorial air. Dressed in a dark check shirt and dark trousers, his is unselfconsciously casual. He speaks in a very quiet, almost husky voice.
Long Manhattan vowels, the elegant, educated Upper East Side variety (or at least what I imagine these to be. I am projecting quite a bit here. I mean, he was born in Baltimore, Maryland for a start). Tousled dark hair, tall, bespectacled. It is nevertheless hard to believe he’s 73, and hard to fathom his body of work: more than twenty operas; eight symphonies (with others already on the way); two piano concertos and concertos for violin, piano, timpani, and saxophone quartet and orchestra; soundtracks to films and countless collaborations with everyone from Ginsberg to David Bowie. I am by no means familiar with all of this work, I am barely scratching the surface as it is.
Before he comes on stage the crowd is skittish, nervous even. It is expressed through the medium of territorialism as people search for their seat number. And the mock patience everyone affects for the people for whom they have to stand up so they can take their seats.
Sitting directly in front of me is Mike Scott. Lead singer/songwriter with The Waterboys. He is a little taller than I would like him to be (because I'm going to have to lean a bit to the left to see Philip Glass). He makes notes throughout the performance, and gives the only audible 'whoop' during the applause after Metamorphoses. No other 'celebrities' in attendance. At least none that I noticed.
Two men taking seats in the centre of our row arrive talking on their phones. Right up until the house lights dim they are passing a phone to each other talking in turns to some other third party. I find this a little irritating, and will them to shut up and settle down. They eventually do, but not before one of them whips out his iPhone to take a picture of Glass as he walks onstage.
It is at this point I realise that I am more than a little (unnecessarily) uptight.
Glass introduces the first piece, which will be eight of his 16 Études (‘Studies’). He explains that he is ‘still working on them’ and has so far learned to play 10 of them (‘that is why they are called Études’), there is a ripple of polite laughter. High art and self deprecation conspire to put everyone at ease.
These pieces are completely new to me. Composed between 1994 and 1999, he later describes them as ‘children from the same family who don’t look much alike’. It’s a good way to describe them. It takes a while to settle into the listening, but they are great pieces. There is a barely noticeable pause between each one, just enough to let you know he’s changing from one to another.
The next piece, Mad Rush, began life as a piece played on a cathedral organ. He was commissioned to write something of ‘indeterminate length’ some time in the late 1970s, for an event with a guest speaker (I couldn’t quite make out what he said here but I think it might have been the Dalai Lama, but I’m really not sure). Whoever hosted wasn’t sure when the speaker would arrive, so Glass had to keep playing. He shortened the final piece and developed it for piano in 1980. Choreographer Lucinda Childs devised a solo dance for it, and they toured it, he says, ‘for years’.
No dancer tonight, just the music, and it is intense, a bit wild. Every so often there is a big crash of keys that suggests the heavy blast of the organ. Watching him play, how he moves, long fingers pounding out big notes but looking elegant, balletic even. It is hypnotic to watch.
His website says that his (early) music immerses “a listener in a sort of sonic weather that twists, turns, surrounds, develops.” It is as good a description as I can offer of what is happening in Mad Rush, but by the end I feel properly immersed in this sonic (and stormy) weather.
The sonic storms prove to be soporific for my wife, whose head lolls back in sleep, and as her head hits the back of the chair she is snapped awake. This happens twice. In her defence, the baby was unwell the night before (hay fever I think) and she didn’t get more than two hours unbroken sleep at any stage. She’s not alone. A heavily pregnant woman in the row in front has drifted off completely, slumped to one side. Her partner has that look that says “I can’t believe you’re missing this!” I know how he feels, but missus Thumb insists later that she heard every note played.
Next up proves to be the highlight for me. Four Metamorphoses, a set of piano pieces drawn from both the film A Thin Blue Line by Errol Morris and a staging of Kafka’s Metamorphosis, for Gerald Thomas’ Kafka Trilogy. He says that, ‘As both projects were undertaken at the same time, the music seemed to lend itself well to a synthesis of this kind’. Or, to put it another way, the children in this particular fanily all look more like each other.
They are incredible. I lose myself in this one completely. I can’t even tell how long they are, I am surprised as the four pieces end, purely because time and space no longer seem to have any meaning. He can’t top that. He really can’t.
Oh but he does.
The next piece doesn’t feature in the programme. It’s called Wichita Vortex Sutra. He tells the story of how the poet Allen Ginsberg, who wrote the poem of the same name in 1966, used to perform the piece to a composition by Glass. They would play it together whenever Ginsberg was available, but he also had a recording of Ginsberg’s reading which he would use in performance. A few years after Ginberg died he dusted off the recording and plays it from time to time. He says that he wants to play it in Dublin, as it is a city of poetry and writers (I’m paraphrasing, but you get the idea).
At this point I am a little wary, as I have seen footage of Ginsberg ‘performing’ before, and have always found it remote, pretentious and, well, just a bit mad really. I’m not expecting to like it at all.
But for all its eccentricity, it works. Ginsberg’s poem is an incantation to all the deities to end the war (Vietnam was in full swing when he wrote it). He was driving across Kansas at the time, so there is this element of a wild shamanistic jaunt across these abandoned plains. Ginsberg conjures up the image of a jiggling fat belly like I’ve never heard and I can picture this naked, Sweeney-like, raging poet, prancing across vast plains. The music is interwoven perfectly, ebbing and flowing in tandem with Ginsberg’s recorded voice. Wild, beautiful and crazy. I am very glad I got to hear this.
When it ends Glass takes his polite bows, and the applause is warm and intense. A few take to their feet, which eventually means we all have to, but it feels a bit contrived. He returns to the stage, and introduces a short encore from A Thin Blue Line, 'Short,' he says, 'so that we can all go home'. Another ripple of laughter. He plays. A soothing palm across our brows after the trip on the Vortex.
More applause, more standing, polite bows and thanks. He’s gone.
Yeah, you really had to be there…
A friend has loaned me a copy of Koyaanisqatsi, described as a ‘filmic landscape with Godfrey Reggio’.
The Glass remains half full.
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