![]() ![]() ![]() If he is not the best organist in the world, there is no one better. Turn, now, to the organ, and in particular to Paul Jacobs, an American in his early forties. Which is about as much as you can say about a new work, in my book. I look forward to hearing this piece again-and a third time. The composer Philip Glass and the New York Philharmonic. After about ten minutes, the overture concludes with a downward chromatic wallop. (March King meets minimalist?) I further heard a suggestion of the Old West, complete with horse hooves. It’s jazzy-and I even thought of John Philip Sousa, during one stretch. The overture is unrelenting, never resting. 2, which Glass also calls The American Four Seasons. The overture would put you in mind of many other Glass works, very much including the Violin Concerto No. If not like King Lear, what does the overture sound like? Like Philip Glass. But the title of a piece tends to steer the listener. When I heard the overture, I didn’t think for a moment of the king, his daughters, Edmund, and the rest. In this new work, can you hear any of King Lear-that is, any of the play? Well, as with a lot of program music (i.e., music meant to depict something concrete or specific), only if you want to. The previous music was merely a springboard, as I understand it, to the new. None of the incidental music appears in the overture. It was inspired by incidental music that Glass wrote for a recent production of King Lear on Broadway. His new work is called King Lear Overture, which may cause you to ask: “Overture to what?” In a program note, Glass hinted that there may be an opera to come. ![]() Some of us, however, will always think of him as about forty, the bad-boy and cool kid of classical music. According to the calendar, Glass is now eighty-two years old. T he New York Philharmonic began its season with a new work by Philip Glass-who is probably the most famous classical composer in the world, if you don’t count John Williams, of Hollywood fame (which you probably should). ![]()
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