Philip GLASS (b. 1937)
Opening [5:07]
Metamorphosis 1 [6:20]
Escape [4:09]
Metamorphosis 3 [5:18]
Metamorphosis 5 [5:37]
Knee Play Two [6:54]
Truman Sleeps [2:31]
Gerard Cousins (guitar)
rec. 1 & 2 April 2017, Monnow Valley Studio, Monmouth, Wales.
ORANGE MOUNTAIN MUSIC OMM0148 [35:32]
Welsh guitarist Gerard Cousins already has a respectable discography under his belt, including recordings on the Galles Music label (review). Having heard some of Philip Glass’s piano music, Cousins studied the composer’s techniques and set about writing some homages, “intrigued and impressed by Glass’s daring. He was unafraid to use such sparing musical material which seemed to grow in intensity with each seeming repetition.” Further inspired by violinist Tim Fain’s spectacular solo version, Cousins set about making his own guitar arrangement of Knee Play II from Einstein on the Beach, a labour of love that took two years to complete satisfactorily. While taking nothing away from the virtuoso nature both of this arrangement and its performance, Cousins succeeds in creating something that sounds entirely natural and idiomatic to the guitar while also taking the instrument to what sounds like its limits.
We are however getting ahead of ourselves. Knee Play II is the climax of a very fine if compact collection of mostly well-known Glass works. The guitar has less sustaining power but more timbre options than the piano, and Cousins plays Glass’s lyrical lines with poetic expressiveness, underpinning them with those distinctive ostinato textures with lively contrasts and a keen ear for variety in terms of sound. The higher, more isolated melodic notes of Escape work less well than elsewhere, but I enjoyed the inevitable Spanish associations thrown up by the guitar sound, especially in the more rhythmic drive of Metamorphosis 3. I wondered a little about the instrument’s tuning from time to time in this recording but, not being a guitar expert, I’m happy to set aside any comments in this regard, my ears probably expecting the same as you would hear from a typically well-tempered Steinway. Metamorphosis 5 is very similar to Metamorphosis 1, but your meditative state will be shaken up by Knee Play II, Glass’s evolving harmonies a scary single line which gives the player nowhere to hide. The plucking effect on strings here is of course different to the original violin, but limitations are turned into advantages, and there are some remarkable effects along the way in this performance. Truman Sleeps from the film ‘The Truman Show’ is a nice, sweet-and-low conclusion.
This detailed and crisp recording will, alas, probably become a bit of a niche production with interest mostly for guitarists and Glass completists. For those of us who know and love the originals of these pieces these versions compliment but do not supplant, gorgeous as they are. It’s a shame we don’t have some of Cousins’ own superb pieces to fill out the very short playing time.
Dominy Clements
