PAUL BARNES - The American Virtuoso (2008) FLAC (image+.cue), lossless

The jury is still out on Philip Glass' transformation of minimalism into a radically populist language, but his later works continue to be widely performed, and, perhaps more important, to inspire innovative programming strategies. This disc by American pianist and Glass specialist Paul Barnes, released on the Glass-oriented Orange Mountain Music label, avoids the tendency to program Glass with his fellow minimalists. Instead he is juxtaposed with two very different composers, neither of whom has much to do with minimalism -- and it turns out that he fits quite well with both. The opening work, Glass' Piano Concerto No. 2 (After Lewis and Clark), has been transcribed for solo piano by Barnes himself. The transcription arguably improves the work, adding a layer of contrasts to the splashy, high-energy tonal color fields of its outer movements. But the real news is that the program places Glass more firmly within the American tradition. Barnes moves smoothly from Glass to the music of twentieth century American music's great conservative, Samuel Barber, with muscular performances of two short pieces and the Beethovenian Piano Sonata, Op. 26; he emphasizes the big blocks of sound in Barber's music and seems to suggest that Barber avoided atavism through an injection of the kind of pure kinetic force that would eventually fascinate Glass. The finale, consisting of a pair of short pieces by Joan Tower, goes in a different direction, focusing on the fact that Tower and Glass share a predilection for the use of small musical cells and a liking for organic metaphors, even if their attitudes toward simplicity and complexity are very different. More broadly, Barnes' disc is one of a group of recent releases that attempts to imagine programs of contemporary, and often specifically contemporary American, music that would please general classical audiences anywhere, something that is more likely to be achieved through imaginative retrospectives that make sense than by wholesale attempts to invent a new musical language. Barnes' big, Lisztian sound adds something to the proceedings on its own. Especially recommended not only to Glass fans, but also to those involved in any way with concert programming, and not only for the piano. by James Manheim