Boston Classical Review

Try though they might, not every season opener qualifies as a bona fide “event.” But Music Worcester’s did on Friday night. With the Philip Glass Ensemble on hand to curate a selection of the iconic American composer’s early works at Mechanics Hall, how could it have turned out otherwise?

Though today the 87-year-old Glass is a senior member of the musical establishment, there was a time not long ago when he and his output were met with open derision. The trademarks of his style – arpeggiated figures, non-traditional harmonic development, repeated gestures, slowly mutating forms, amplification – provoked hostility and scorn in certain quarters.

Yet while the works on offer this weekend betrayed a certain tendency towards static dynamics and monotexture, what was going on beneath their surfaces – and even within them – was something else entirely. In fact, on the evening’s evidence, one was struck anew by the realization that, for restless variety and invention, Glass belongs to a tradition that predates Bach and Beethoven: think Josquin des Prez and Guillaume Dufay.

That certainly seemed the case in the night’s oldest item, the recently rediscovered Music in Eight Parts. Completed in 1969, the score was thought lost until it turned up at an auction house in 2017. Basically a microcosmic exploration of polyphonic ideas that Glass perfected in his evening-length Music in Twelve Parts, Music in Eight Parts traces the accumulation and disintegration of a series of contrapuntal lines across a span of roughly fifteen minutes.

In Friday’s performance, Music’s Central Massachusetts premiere, the work’s fluctuating structural design emerged briskly. And although Lisa Bielawa’s vocals were often buried in the collective’s uneven live mix, more than a few of the subtleties of Glass’s writing – particularly his deft ear for phrasings and instrumentation – still spoke.

Likewise vitalizing was the Ensemble’s account of Glassworks. Written in 1981 with the express purpose of finding the composer a larger audience, its six movements showcase the essentials of Glass’s sound world and style.

At Mechanics, those came through largely intact. Michael Riesman’s account of the “Opening” featured impeccable rhythmic clarity while the dovetailing from piano to winds going into “Floe” (also between clarinetists Sam Sadigursky and Peter Hess in “Islands”) was exquisite.

Alas, the erratic blend of amplification with electronic instruments wreaked havoc on parts of “Floe” and “Rubric.” Even so, the unfolding developments of sonority and gesture in “Islands” and the rich blend of low woodwinds in “Closing” touchingly delivered on their moments of repose.

There was little serenity to be found either in the driving, motoric “Funeral” from Akhnaten or in the night’s encore of “Spaceship” from Einstein on the Beach. The latter, with its buzzing bass lines and furious unison runs, was as much a display of visionary theatricality as it was a thrilling exhibition of sheer virtuosity.

To be sure, the last point decisively undercuts earlier generations’ complaints about this music: for all its supposed simplicity, there is nothing easy, physically or mentally, about sustaining its long arcs or its incessantly busy and exposed instrumental (and vocal) parts.

That fact came home emphatically in Act 3 from The Photographer. In architecture, instrumentation, and pacing, this balletic final section of Glass’s 1982 opera about the murder trial of Eadweard Muybridge anticipates a good bit of his later film music. Yet as with the evening’s previous selections, it hardly stints on harmonic freshness or rhythmic and textural creativity.

With Bielawa and Riesman leading the way, those qualities came over on Friday with hypnotic, irresistible force. Indeed, by the time The Photographer’s ecstatic coda rolled around, the performance – and the night – was cruising on pure bliss.

Music Worcester presents its first BACHtoberfest with CONCORA performing Bach cantatas 8 p.m. October 25 at Mechanics Hall. musicworcester.org

Posted in Performances

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