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"Philip Glass Symphonies #6 & #8" posted November 5, 2005 at 01:57 PM

This ode to you O Poets and Orators to come, you father Whitman as I join your side, you Congress and American people,
you present meditators, spiritual friends & teachers, you O Master of the Diamond Arts,
Take this wheel of syllables in hand, these vowels and consonants to breath's end
take this inhalation of black poison to your heart, breath out this blessing from your breast on our creation
forests cities oceans deserts rocky flats and mountains in the Ten Directions pacify with exhalation,
enrich this Plutonian Ode to explode its empty thunder through earthen thought-worlds
Magnetize this howl with heartless compassion, destroy this mountain of Plutonium with ordinary mind and body speech,
thus empower this Mind-guard spirit gone out, gone out, gone beyond, gone beyond me, Wake space, so Ah!

--Allen Ginsberg, part III of Plutonian Ode



Last night I had the pleasure of hearing two recent symphonies by Philip Glass: Symphony #6 ("Plutonian Ode") and the world premiere of Symphony #8. These were performed at BAM by Austria's Bruckner Orchestra Linz, conducted by Glass champion and former Brooklyn Philharmonic music director Dennis Russell Davies.

The program began with #8. A few minutes into the first movement, I thought "well, this is nice, but it all sounds very familiar and I wish Glass would flex his muscles a little bit more." No sooner did the thought pass than the orchestra broke out into a fantastic quick frenzy of percussion and layering of arpeggios and scales which sounded like Philip Glass interpreted by a Martian orchestra 200 years in the future. I think Glass is often underrated as an orchestral composer because so much of his music is composed for and performed by his own (mostly electronic) ensemble. As the second movement of this symphony showed, Glass understands the role of each individual orchestral section--the basses were featured prominently in a way I've never heard a symphonic composer do before, and woodwinds were used effectively for their penetrating sound and ability to hold close harmonies. The brass performance was not so hot--trumpet players missing notes all over the place, it seemed--but the strings were together and very balanced. The frantic first movement gave way to a peaceful second movement. But then instead of ramping back up to a fast-tempo third movement, Glass pulls the piece back even farther to a slow, dark, moody scene, with a quiet ending. Wonderful.

Symphony #6 is a beast of an entirely other color--a powerhouse setting of Allen Ginsburg's 1978 poem Plutonian Ode. Set in three movements, the first decries nuclear pollution and paranoia, the second reflects on healing and post-nuclear peacefulness, and the third (text above) is a personal call to action--the poet urging others to join him in a soul-awakening call to "wake space" itself with self-empowerment.

Glass sets the text for a lyric soprano--sung last night with panache, verve, passion (and bit of diva camp) by Lauren Flanigan. She wore an electric blue gown and wrapped herself in a dark indigo floor-length satin shawl. She chewed up Ginsberg's words and alternately swallowed them, spit them at the audience, let them drip from her lips, and spoke them with plainness and honesty. Flanigan fills her silences with knowing looks, inward smiles, her head shaking with disbelief at the emotion within her, her arms gesturing forward to the audience or backward to the orchestra with a "come on let's do it!" impatience--it's a fabulous theatrical performance (some of my friends found it a bit overwrought but I thought it was spot on).

The first movement tumbles forward so quickly and relentlessly that when it ends with an upwardly mobile scale and disappears into the ether the silence afterward is almost painfully sweet. The second movement is all lyricism and melody. For me, the opening of the third movement is where Glass proves himself able to hold onto his proven motifs and structures and yet manage after all these years of using them to reinvent them. A simple, repetitive phrase in the first violins is punctuated with glockenspiel exclamation points. Over and over. And again. Many iterations later the second violins join in and the glockenspiel disappears, all the while the first violins keep going in Glass's inimitable repetitive structures.

The audience applauded warmly for #8, but went wild for #6--an appropriate response I not only agreed with but participated in myself. Glass emerged for a bow at the end of the evening--New York audiences seem to love him not only as a composer but as a local, a neighbor, and a long-standing reason to embrace our city's culture. A few rounds of Bravo! and we all dispersed into the warm Brooklyn autumn evening.

Bonus Glass/Ginsberg mp3 for you: Song #11: The Green Automobile from their 1990 collaboration, Hydrogen Jukebox

I attended the concert with Adrienne, Paula, Rebecca, and Rafael. Afterward, we walked up Flatbush Avenue to an Italian place Paula suggested: Franny's. Wood-fire oven pizzas and cozy atmosphere. All the pizzas we had were wonderful--thin, crispy and freshly flavored with fennel sausage, sea salt, garlic, chilies, olives, or anchovies--but for me the highlight was the salad I had to start. Crispy lettuce with hard-boiled egg, salty pancetta, pickled beets, and vinegar, it was just about the best salad I've ever eaten. No kidding. Get thee to Franny's.

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