COMPOSERS: Glass
LABELS: Sony
WORKS: Einstein on the Beach (excerpts); Satyagraha; Akhnaten
PERFORMER: Various performers
CATALOGUE NO: SM3K 62960 1979-93
Twenty extracts of Glass’s best music of 1975-88, celebrating the composer’s sixtieth birthday and commemorating more than a decade with CBS and Sony. The loose assembly under single-disc headings – choral, ensemble and ‘prefigur[ing] recent developments’ – sometimes makes me long for the carefully varied contexts of these bleeding chunks, and the four extracts from Einstein on the Beach inevitably come from the inferior 1978 recording, not the recent one from Nonesuch. This collection is, however, a splendid testimony to Glass’s achievements and is of particular value to Glass newcomers. Keith Potter
Glass: Einstein on the Beach (excerpts); Satyagraha; Akhnaten
Twenty extracts of Glass’s best music of 1975-88, celebrating the composer’s sixtieth birthday and commemorating more than a decade with CBS and Sony. The loose assembly under single-disc headings – choral, ensemble and ‘prefigur[ing] recent developments’ – sometimes makes me long for the carefully varied contexts of these bleeding chunks, and the four extracts from Einstein on the Beach inevitably come from the inferior 1978 recording, not the recent one from Nonesuch. This collection is, however, a splendid testimony to Glass’s achievements and is of particular value to Glass newcomers.
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