Glass: Violin Concerto / Prelude and Dance from Akhnaten / Company

Philip Glass's signature doom-and-gloom minor sonorities and shifting rhythms scintillate and eddy under the touch of Adele Anthony and the Ulster Symphony. The solo line in the Violin Concerto is at odds with a unified orchestra throughout, and Anthony's romantic tone draws the listener in for an exploration of the texture, grain, and fiber of Glass's structural minimalism. The Ulster Symphony's rendering of Company and Akhnaten, under the leadership of Takuo Yuasa, forms brilliant darts of tonal color. As a musical adaptation of Samuel Beckett's prose of the same name, Company's dark ruminations are appropriate for the text's depiction of a solitary figure lying on his back in the dark. The orchestra seems aware of their repetitious mechanical task in performing these works, yet this human awareness is what makes Glass's orchestral work so compelling. --Alexis Odell