![]() ![]() (Davies actually stopped scattered applause that threatened the quiet endings of both the second and third movements.) Out of the locomotive energy of his early music, Glass has emerged as a full-blown and, in many ways, unabashedly traditional symphonist. Again, Sibelius and Shostakovich are not bad comparisons. The finale has something of that melancholy, too, though encased in thick, stony activity. The repetition here becomes a tool, a way to wind that energy back down to a resigned cafard with stylistic consistency. It promptly becomes grist for Glass’s motoric mill, but the machine ventures far afield, eventually reaching something like symphonic rock: the full orchestra chugging away to a percussion backbeat. ![]() The second movement brings a theme as sumptuous as anything Glass has ever written, almost a pop progression, shot through with Sibelius-like grandeur. The percussion section keeps dropping in ever more dry and sardonic accompaniment - castanets, woodblocks - in a way reminiscent of late Shostakovich. And the blocks are multifarious: an uneasy minor-diminished seesaw here, Gothic-mood scales there, passages both monumental and moody. 9 opens with a basic, three-part structure, filled with juxtaposed blocks of texture, but in ever faster-cutting succession. The basic recipe has not changed, but he has far more ingredients to choose from. In some way, everything Glass writes can be traced back to this maneuver, even as the variations on it have multiplied, and the material itself has extended far across the harmonic spectrum, all the way from clean triads to tangled, dissonant haze. ![]()
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