Glass' minimalism too much for Oberlin audience

In 1928, after completing the score for Bolero, composer Maurice Ravel wrote to his friend, "I have just finished composing 17 minutes of orchestra with no music." Seventy years later, composer Philip Glass may have succeeded in achieving the exact same thing. His 20-minute orchestra piece, Days and Nights in Rocinha, made its American debut in Finney Chapel Sunday with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Dennis Russell Davies.

Written in Glass's trademark minimalist style, the piece begins with a simple chord progression and gradually grows in harmonic and rhythmic complexity. Unfortunately the progression moved too slowly for an average audience to avoid a collective nap. A pretty tune redeemed the piece for some, but even so, as one student quipped, "It was like Bette Midler on acid."

Listening to this piece evoked a sense of irony which is best expressed with the composer's own reaction to the word minimalism: "I think that word should be stamped out! To call it 'minimal' is just a mistake. This technique is capable of supporting music of richness and variety." While his assessment of the technique itself is fair, richness and variety were two things missing from his piece. By his own decree, Glass's piece epitomizes a minimalist composition.

Though curiously, this reviewer feels torn between criticism and silent acceptance. One can choose to call something "bad" because it fails to meet his criteria for what he considers to be "good." But he should also realize that Glass normally writes for an audience separate from the usual symphony-orchestra concert-goers.

Certainly in this institution, at least behind Conservatory walls, an appreciation of Glass's music is usually accompanied by feelings of shame and confusion. The mention of his name seldom fails to elicit a wince or shudder. And if his music is intended to be appreciated by a group of listeners separate from this elitist circle of critics and other "jaded intellectuals," then members of that circle have neither right nor reason to call it "bad."

The problem, perhaps, is that the piece was ever played here to begin with. Presumably the long-unavoidable Oberlin stereotype has given someone reason to believe that this sort of thing would be easily accepted due to its original air of rebellion (against the former supposedly stuffy dogmas of classical music). But minimalism, in Glass's own paralyzing use of the term, has since become trite and no longer belongs in a symphony orchestra concert hall. Glass himself has seen greater success with the use of his music in the areas of ballet, film, and theater. "Richness and variety" would have been nice.

This description of the piece says little about the orchestra which played it. The Detroit Symphony Orchestra is a consort of dedicated and sensitive players. The personality of the ensemble was evident from the very beginning when the instrumentalists stood to acknowledge their applause facing the audience.

The concert opened with the Hebrides Overture by Felix Mendelssohn, and it was a fine way to begin. Early on it was apparent that this was a responsive ensemble - indeed the sense of communication between conductor and orchestra was enlivening. Conducting the Mendelssohn mostly from memory, the visually expressive Davies was in control, and as such, the power of the music was unleashed.

The concert concluded with Beethoven's Third Symphony (the Eroica). Though the symphony is commonly played at a brisker tempo (to convey the "heroic" qualities for which it is named), Davies' slower reading of it was elegant. There are disadvantages of playing in this tempo: the slow theme almost stopped, and the grating climax of the first movement was smoothed-over. Regardless, the sit-back-and-relax style of playing was a welcome alternative to the usual "heroism."

In the Funeral March (second movement) the orchestra seemed most at home, extracting endless gradations of warmth from Beethoven's score. The fugue in this movement was the climax of the entire concert and the playing was focused throughout.

After such a weighty slow movement, the remaining two movements complemented the preceding with a blend of wit and youthful energy. The hushed tension Davies elicited in the opening of the Scherzo was not unlike that of a group of people hurrying to prepare a surprise party. But it was not until the close of the last movement that Davies finally unleashed his own "heroism": the coda was a torrent of notes that joyously brought the symphony full circle to the heroic chords with which it began.