Duckett: Glass, Sutter hypnotize at Bijou

Composer Philip Glass mesmerized a sizable crowd at the Bijou Theatre on Saturday afternoon with a dazzling performance of his own music.

Playing as part of The Big Ears Festival, Glass presented solo piano pieces and duets with cellist Wendy Sutter. Sutter also played "Songs and Poems for Solo Cello," which Glass wrote in 2007 for her.

Glass began the concert with the second and fourth of the four pieces from "Metamorphosis," written in 1989.

The blocks of binary drone patterns that underlie the framework of "Metamorphosis" still have a hypnotic effect even after listening to his music for the past 30 years.

Subtle changes from a natural to a sharp in one of the notes in the patterns gave the pieces a kind of freshness one doesn't expect from music built on repeated sound images.

Next, Sutter played the seven songs that make up "Songs and Poems." Sutter's cello sang with every note in the wonderful acoustics of the Bijou Theatre.

Then Glass returned to the stage to play six of his "Etudes," numbers 1, 3, 6, 7, 8 and 10, written in 1994.

Played as a continuous suite, the 3rd was full of energy and enthusiasm that separated it from its neighboring pieces, while the 10th and final one was full of sweet charm and singing lines that appear unexpectedly.

Sutter then returned to the stage for duets of three pieces from Glass' 1990 score written in collaboration with Foday Musa Suso for the play "The Screens."

The first one, "The Orchard," the incidental music from the middle of the play, was both gorgeous and mournful, reflecting the sad state of the women about whom this play is written. The second piece, "France," comes from near the play's end, while the third piece, "The French Lieutenant Dreams," is nearer to the play's beginning.

Both in its parts and as a whole, this concert was an extraordinary event that will be long remembered.

© 2009, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.
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