Philip Glass: Complete piano etudes

Máire Carroll Piano

Delphian DCD34330
https://www.delphianrecords.com/

Let this disc transport you to a world where dimensions and parameters are unrestricted, allowing your consciousness to expand into new perceptual areas as the beautiful melodies sweep around. Let your imagination take over. This is the apogee of mindfulness, where music can speak powerfully. We should welcome the minimalistic nature of Glass' compositions in an era where we overburden our minds with minutiae and often forget we have the time and space to think.

Máire Carroll communicates with such delicacy and exquisiteness, not forgetting that to perform Glass well, the energy levels must be consistent throughout. Her carefully judged performances superbly communicate her empathetic interpretations.

Delphian’s insightful notes explain that music for solo piano played a peripheral role during the first three decades of Philip Glass’s composing career, but from the 1990s onwards he was increasingly in demand for solo performances of his own music. Keen both to provide himself with new repertoire and to develop his technical skills as a pianist, he set to work on Book 1 of what would eventually become a set of twenty etudes whose virtuosic surfaces conceal some of the composer’s most intensely personal music.

Carroll’s interpretations are thoughtful and astute, showing acumen as she performs Glass’ delightful etudes with technical expertise and perspicacity. Máire Carroll met the challenge head-on, performing the entire set of etudes live from memory before taking them into the recording studio.

Fluent, expressive, and lyrical, her performances are compelling and irresistible. My only disappointment is that I did not start reviewing this disc immediately it landed. The combination of Carroll’s articulate finger work on the Steinway model D, and Delphian’s clarity in recording are divine.

Pwyll ap Siôn Professor of Music at Bangor University, provides interesting notes as well as a short interview he conducted with Máire Carroll.

As the last notes fade after nine minutes of simply entrancing music from Etude 20, one realises how intoxicating these etudes are. What a highlight of the year!

Glass’s etudes have become connected in my mind to certain times and places and to certain emotions I experienced while learning them. They’re very personal for Glass, but they’re also very personal to me, interpreting them.