The concert program includes pages written specifically for piano and transcriptions of pieces originally for organ or instrumental ensembles. These are compositions conceived in a time span that covers a large part of the author's artistic career, from 1976 to 1999.
Mad Rush (1980)
Commissioned by Radio Bremen and originally composed for organ. Shortly after the first performance, Lucinda Childs created a choreography to this piece.
Études (1994-1999)
A composition cycle that includes a total of 16 pieces for piano, written over a period of five years. Each study began with a different stylistic approach to the piano, so as to give the individual pieces a specific character.
The Fourth Knee Play (1976)
The Fourth Knee Play brings together four of the five short interludes that, in the famous opera Einstein On The Beach, composed together with the theatre director Robert Wilson, constituted moments of connection: the term knee, knee in English, refers precisely to the function of “joint”. Originally the Knee Plays were for male choir and solo violin, who were entrusted with the interpretation of the role of Einstein.
Excerpts from A Musical Journey (1988)
Piano compositions written for a series of works born from the collaboration between Philip Glass and the African musician Foday Musa Suso, a virtuoso of the kora.
Four Metamorphoses (1989)
A set of piano pieces taken from the soundtrack of the film A Thin Blue Line by Errol Morris and from the staging of Kafka's Metamorphosis, part of the Kafka Trilogy (The Process) by Gerald Thomas which debuted in São Paulo, Brazil. Because both projects were undertaken simultaneously, their respective music lends itself perfectly to Glass's synthesis in Four Metamorphoses.
