PHILIP GLASS (b.1937): Songs and Poems for Solo Cello, Tissues 1, 2, 6 & 7 (from Naqoyqatsi) for Cello, Percussion and Piano.

Description: Glass has written comparatively little for solo instruments. The substantial 2007 Songs and Poems is an exception, and a surprising and telling one, suggesting as it does the composer Glass might have been - and apparently, is - had the whole minimalism thing not taken off like a juggernaut. Taking its cue from obvious Baroque models, the pieces form a dark-textured, emotionally intense and tragic sequence, with very little of the arpeggiated repeated gestural material that one instantly recognizes as Glass' style. Given that sounding like the accompanimental lines from Baroque, classical and early music is one of the familiar characteristics of minimal music (which Nyman for one has had glorious fun with in his Purcell and Mozart-based pieces) the divide between the two isn't that wide, and is easily bridged by a composer of Glass' gifts. The four Tissues are atmospheric scene-setting episodes originally intended for Yo-Yo Ma in the third film of Godfrey Reggio's trilogy, Naqoyqatsi. These are closer to Glass' usual ensemble minimalism, with little repeated chromatic fragments and insistent open intervals providing movement, though the third one, with piano, has ties to the quasi-Baroque atmosphere of the Songs and Poems. Wendy Sutter (cello), David Cossin (percussion), Philip Glass (piano).