I went to a concert at the New York Public Library, the performing art branch at Lincoln Center. This concert is a tribute to Phillips Glass’s 75 years birthday. Mr. Glass is a contemporary composer who writes music in classical style, as well as music for movies. Some of the music played at the concert was originally written for orchestra or opera. Pianist Paul Barnes transposed them into piano music and performed at the concert. He and Glass have a lot of collaborations before.
The first pieces is “Trilogy Sonata”, a piano arrangement of Phillips Glass’s opera. The style is very different from a classical sonata such as Mozart’s, however, its progression between movements follows the same pattern. It starts with energetic opening in minor key, with left hand playing melody in chords and right hand playing arpeggiated chord. The chord brings out the theme melody, and is repeated several times. As the chord keeps the same motion, the right hands’ accompaniment changes. Then the second theme comes in as left hand’s melody changes, another line of music is added and the right hand’s accompaniment also creates another line of melody. Some variation of this melody is played and each phase within the variation ends with the same single note in high pitch. In the end, the music returns to the beginning theme.
The Second movement has a slow, lyrical start and keep the slow motion through the whole movement. The same chord progression is repeated for several times before the main melody finally comes in right hand. Same as the first movement, theme in the second movement is also very easy to catch. And the whole piece can be generalized as theme and variations.
The third movement is a dance movement in compound meter. It starts with loud chord that has nothing to do with the theme, but just to catch people’s attention. Then left hand plays melody, and right hand repeats two notes very rapidly. The beat and rhythmic is very steady through out the whole piece.
The last movement returns to similar motion of its first movement just with different theme, but I feel the melody is not as beautiful but sadder.
The second piece is called “The Orphée Suite” with 6 movements. The first one, The Café, is in ragtime style, and gives you the feeling of a crowded café. Followed by Orphée’s Bedroom which is a very touching quite piece in slow speed. Journey to the Underworld sounds more mysterious, with minor chords and occasional dissonances. Orphée and the Princess has a very obvious chord progression, which I feel is usually used in movie music and is associated with love scene. And this kind of recognizable melody is called the Leitmotiv: brief musical idea connected to some person, event, or idea in a music drama. Returns to Orphée’s House sounds like people are running. While it’s in a minor key and chromatic, it gives a feeling that people are running from disasters. Although the whole piece is in the same tempo, the later half feels slower as the leading melody is in a slower rhythm. Orphée’s Return is also theme and variation, and these variations are in a pattern in which it gradually build up the climax is which both melody and accompaniment are played in very loud chore. with louder chord, however you still can easily recognize the main theme. Then comes the coda, and slowly notes drop down. It also shows the chromatic scale before it finally returns to tonic, the tonic note repeated several time.
The last movement, Orphée’s Bedroom –reprise: is in a lament mood, with the love Leitmotiv that you can still hear, and finally the whole piece ends in a quietly.
I really love this concert and enjoyed it a lot. Different from other classical music concert, this one is very easy to enjoy and you don’t have much knowledge to know what’s going on in the music. Anyone can recognize the theme easily, and the melody is similar to what you usually hear in movie background, so it’s very easily to let your imagination goes with the music.
