Credits
- Recordings: Vienna, Musikverein, Grosser Saal, 11/1991 (Schnittke) & 2/1992 (Glass)
- Produced by Wolfgang Stengel
- Balance Engineer: Rainer Maillard
- Editing: Ingmar Haas (Glass)
- Recorded using B&W Loudspeakers
- Publishers: Glass Copyright 1987 Dunvagen Music Publishers, Inc. (ASCAP);
- Musikverlag Hans Sidorski, Hamburg (Schnittke)
- For Philip Glass:
- Music: Music Sales Corp./G. Schirmer, Inc.
- Recordings: Euphorbia Productions Ltd.
- Representation: International Production Associates
- Production: Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Hamburg
- Copyright: 1993 Susan Feder; Dr. Dominique Sohet; Dr. Ernesto Napolitano
- Cover: Pavel Filonov, Formula of the Universe (detail), 1920-28; watercolour, ink, pen on paper (Russian State Museum, St. Petesburg)
- Artist Photos by Gabriela Brandenstein
References
- Deutsche Grammophon 437 091 2 (1993)
Tracks
- 1. .| = 104- .| = 120 [6'38]
- 2. .| = ca. 108 [8'46]
- 3. .| = ca. 150 - Coda: Poco meno .| = 104 [9'30]
- This record also includes Concerto Grosso No. 5 for Violin, an Invisible Piano* and Orchestra by ALFRED SCHNITTKE
Notes
- by Susan Feder
``The search for the unique can lead to strange places. Taboos---the things we're no supposed to do---are often the more interesting. In my case, musical materials are found among ordinary things, such as sequences and cadences.''
When Philip Glass wrote his first major orchestral work, this 1987 Violin Concerto, his compositional ``search'' indeed led him to the ordinary. Glass, best known at the time as a composer of music for opera, film, theatre, dance end his own Philip Glass Ensemble, took on one of the most enduring genres in Western music. In so doing he cast it in most familiar terms.
Glass's Violin Concerto falls into the three-movement structure common to the vast majority of concertos written in the last three centuries, and is scored---as are his operas---for an orchestra of conventional size and configuration. ``I like the normal orchestra,'' he commented at the time of the premi\`ere by the American Composers Orchestra (Dennis Russell Davies conducting and Paul Zukovsky, violin) on 5 April 1987. ``I have an alternative electronic medium, which is my ensemble. By writing for both there's a balance in my activities.''
Familiar, too, are the opening chugging chords, the solo violin's first arpeggios, and the repetitive patterns that cause time to be absorbed into large units rather than to be divided up: the Concerto is instantly identifiable as music by Philip Glass. ``This piece explores what an orchestra can do for me. In it, I'm more interested in my own sound than in the capability of particular orchestral instruments. It is tailored to my musical needs.'' Also his dramatic needs: Glass observed that the concerto form ``is more theatrical ond more personal'' than pure orchestral music.
[...]
The violonist for whom this Concerto was written, Paul Zukofsky, was a close colleaugue of Glass's and had long urged the composer to write a concerto. He collaborated closely with Glass during the composition of the piece, asking, for example, for a slow, high finale. Glass's plans to comply were thwarted when he found his original conception of a piece in five short movements giving away to a long first and second movement. ``The material finds a voice of its own,'' he conceded, revealing that the Concerto's three-movement structure was actaully ``an accident''. While Glass ultimately wrote a fast thrid movement, its slow coda both satisfied Zukofsky's request and harkened back to the other two movements. The violinist also offered suggestions in the firts movement that had large-scale harmonic implications: ``I heard the piece with a `tonal identity' of C minor and D,'' recalled Glass, ``but by moving it up a step the violin sounds far better.'' Glass found their collaboration highly satisfactory: ``This is the piece that I wanted to write.''
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