About this item

Philip Glass' 20 tudes for piano were written in two sets, with Glass himself as the intended performer. Like Chopin's tudes, however, they are susceptible to an unusually wide range of possible interpretations. Jenny Lin has been close to Glass at various points in the works' development, but this does not mean that she is obligated to follow his lead in terms of interpretation. Indeed, it's the best possible news for his music that any prescriptions he may have laid down are now being discarded in favor of variety. Lin has performed on bills where the etudes are performed in a group to show their versatility. The etudes fit generally into Glass' late style, introducing Romantic elements into a harmonically varied minimalist language. Lin offers some of the widest dynamic ranges to be heard on recordings of Glass' keyboard and chamber music, and her performances are sweeping and powerful. Sample the spacious Etude No. 7, in which Glass' music takes on real epic stature, or the quiet conclusion to the whole (the Etude No. 20) . Lin made the recordings on four separate occasions, all at the acoustically superb Steinway Hall, and the tudes, like Chopin's, were perhaps not meant to be played all together. Maybe this is a lot of Philip Glass at once, but the increasing variety of Glass recordings, beyond his own Orange Mountain Music label, is nothing but good news for lovers of his music, and this must be one of the strongest new entries in the field.