Simone Dinnerstein & Baroklyn: Hourglass
naïve

It would be interesting to travel back in time to ask a listener attending the July 25th, 1976 world premiere of Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach at the Festival d'Avignon to project what she might think the composer's music would sound like fifty years later. Would she have imagined it to be something similarly iconoclastic and visionary, or would she have predicted that its rough edges would soften and his music become more palatable to the general public? His ninetieth birthday arrives in January 2027, which makes it fitting that the material presented by American pianist Simone Dinnerstein and her string ensemble Baroklyn (a conflation of Baroque and Brooklyn, the New York borough she calls home) on this latest all-Glass release would exude the kind of autumnal serenity one associates with a composer approaching the end of his life. Aptly titled Hourglass, the release pairs two works, the suite from The Hours and Tirol Concerto, both scored for piano and strings.

Dinnerstein's collaboration with the composer began a decade ago: Glass's third piano concerto, which he wrote for her in 2017, appears on her 2018 release with A Far Cry, Circles, and her discography includes a number of other recordings featuring his music. A Character of Quiet pairs Glass with Schubert, while Undersong does the same but with (Robert) Schumann, Satie, and Couperin. Her repertoire extends to other composers too, however, with Ives and J. S. Bach other central focal points. While she's performed with a number of orchestras around the world, Hourglass finds her partnering with the eleven-member string ensemble she founded in 2017 and directs , and the combination suits the music perfectly for amplifying its intimacy.

Her insightful understanding of Glass's music is reflected in liner notes that reveal her sensitivity to its polyphonic character and graceful character. On this album, the former's present in the music's design, specifically in its coupling of separate parts for the pianist's hands and the five independent parts played by the strings (celesta and harp build on that in the suite for The Hours). Independence extends beyond melody when each voice delivers a distinct rhythm also. Such an arrangement generates tension, but tension of a subtle kind when the music is so effectively resolved and often peaceful.

The score Glass wrote in 2002 for Stephen Daldry's film treatment of Michael Cuningham's novel The Hours (not to be confused with the 2022 opera by composer Kevin Puts and librettist Greg Pierce) was later adapted by Glass's long-time associate Michael Riesman into a three-part suite. While stylistically it's far removed from the composer's earlier output, Glass's fingerprints are still clearly audible in its deployment of transfixing repetitive patterns and their elegant interlacing. There's intricacy in the layering of voices certainly, yet the music, always expressive and harmonious, never feels overly complex. Transformation is present yet effected seamlessly and fluidly throughout its twenty-seven minutes.

The first movement introduces the piece hauntingly with slow unfurls of strings and surging pulses. Glass's melodic sensibility imbues the material with poignancy, whether it be the string ensemble's introduction or the unaccompanied piano section that follows. Dinnerstein's sensitive handling of tempo and dynamics renders Glass's elegiac writing all the more alluring as the keyboard and strings conjoin. The pace slows to a gentle lilt for the central movement, which exudes an even more introspective quality—until, that is, brief moments of exuberant activity arise midway through. That change in energy carries over into the third movement, which pulsates with forceful determination as somersaulting harp and piano patterns and churning strings usher the work to a dynamic finish.

Effectively pairing with the suite is Tirol Concerto (2000), the first concerto Glass wrote for piano and a piece that, oddly, went unperformed in New York for more than two decades until Dinnerstein's performance with the Brooklyn Orchestra in late 2023. Deriving its title from the fact that Glass based it in part on melody fragments from traditional folk music in the Tyrolean tradition, the work frames a long-form middle movement with two concise statements. After a brief solo piano intro, the music takes flight with both instrument components ascending rapidly and the piece roiling at high volume and intensity. Swirling arpeggios by both piano and strings brand the movement as classic Glass, after which the central movement imposes calm with material that borrows from his oft-performed etudes. Lyrical and lustrous, the movement develops patiently across sixteen minutes, the performers executing with authority and basking in the opportunity to deliver their parts at their leisure. The nimble-footed third movement guides the work to a sparkling close, the tempo fast and the music breathless in its insistence.

July 2026