SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Philip Glass, Book of Longing: (based on the work of Leonard Cohen) The Philip Glass Ensemble, Michael Reisman (conductor)  Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff 17.10.2007 (MS)

On paper, this does not sound like a great night out, with the poems of Leonard Cohen - surely one of the most depressing song-writers ever -  set to music by Philip Glass, the  repetitive 'minimalist'  composer  somewhere at  the forefront of the contemporary classical tradition. But the result is remarkably beautiful and totally engaging.

Talking to audience members, it seemed that some had come for Cohen and others for Philip Glass. I slip into the second camp and here, while his music sounds typically and deceptively simple, often just arpeggios over a bass line, but  then as elegant as Bach and at times reaching out for the rhythms of jazz, I found the whole thing fascinating The melodic lines are soulful but also surprisingly catchy and they played through my brain most of the following morning.

The staging is also deceptively simple, a small electronic, percussion and string ensemble with Philip Glass himself at one  keyboard and conductor Michael Reisman on another.

The poems are all taken from Leonard Cohen's latest collection, the Book of Longing and are surprising cheerful for Cohen. Though the vicious biting satire is still around, these poems are more melancholic, even romantic.

Some poems were pre-recorded readings by Cohen himself with his unique deep gravel voice.  Others were sung by Dominique Plaisant, Tara Hugo, Will Erat and Daniel Keeling. Cohen’s drawings populated the backdrop, with a fixed set of doodles, assembled around a screen illuminated with a slide show of other hand-drawn images and musings, including plenty of self portraits, some naked women and studies from his time in the Buddhist environment.

The feel of the show was part concert and part cabaret with the singers interacting around the stage as they moved from solos to quartets:  the music ranged from instrumental solos to excitable ensemble sections of sweeping sounds.

Quite how the 22 poems selected for the show – for this European premiere - are affected by their delivery in song is something for a more devoted Cohen aficionado to determine. Personally I found the lyrics simple and unaffected. Yes, there is a real dependence on simplicity of rhythm and meter and much repetition which is then reflected in the music from Glass, but the cumulative effect is convincing.

I heard the word 'soporific' spoken  by some audience members as they left the well attended first night of  this major artistic coup for the Wales Millennium Centre but the experience was  soporific in a pleasant, calming and seductive way rather than merely  sleep inducing. The concert is repeated at The Barbican, London on 20^th October.

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