"I filled in for Maki at the very last minute," recalls pianist-composer Timo Andres about when he subbed for the indisposed Japanese pianist Maki Namekawa at London's Barbican in 2013. "My friend Nico Muhly asked me to play, and I had to learn five Philip Glass Etudes in a few days," he says in quiet amazement by phone from his Brooklyn apartment. This week the 25-year-old musician will be joining Namekawa and the celebrated and deeply influential composer Philip Glass for a complete San Francisco Performances-presented concert of Books 1 and 2 of Glass' 20 Piano Etudes (1991-2012).
"One of the nice things about it is the variety of perspectives you get," Andres says. He notes what he feels to be a sort of sea change in Glass' work, from "the clean, restrained, Stravinskyan approach" found in his classic minimalist period (1967-74) to the Etudes, which show "the romanticism sort of underlying his music," which I've always found both approachable and exciting, though many others haven't. Yet that's just perception, and the idea of a composer touring with his piano pieces sounds so 19th century �" Brahms and Liszt �" until we remember that Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Bartok, and even Stravinsky toured with their piano pieces in the last century, and now we have Glass getting the same star treatment.
Andres, who will be playing Etudes #5, 6, 7, 13, 14, 15, and 16, has a lot to say about them. "It's like Mozart, there's nowhere to hide, and if you hit a wrong note, the audience will hear it. The challenges in playing them can be more interpretive than technical." But he says "the compound [syncopated] 7/8 meter in #16" is challenging, and #15, which pits a hymn-like cadence in the left hand against rapid arpeggiations in the right for much of its duration, "poses challenges as well," He notes that #10, "in B-flat dominant, doesn't modulate, and there's not a single non-scaler tone." With its marked, raga-like gesture in the treble, which he illustrates vividly on his piano, it "poses endurance problems." It also shows how skillfully Glass incorporates other traditions, like the Indian vamping harmonium-like left-hand figure, into his own voice, and it will probably bring down the house at the end of Book 1.
Namekawa, who was uncomfortable being interviewed in English, responded to my e-mail, forwarded by my friend Richard Guerin, who works for Glass, with probable help from her husband conductor Dennis Russell Davies, with whom she plays piano four hands. "I enjoy the directness of Philip's musical language. Behind a surface simplicity is often a depth and intricacy which attracts a large audience, many of whom have little experience with classical music." And the technical challenges? "Philip's music requires musicians who are able to harness their technique to achieve balance with a kind of classical purity of line in their performance. Musicians who play Bach and Haydn beautifully duel with this music. Every one of these etudes has its own interesting degree of difficulty. That's why I find this complete etude project fascinating."
Namekawa noted that "the concert world needs these new listeners" who haven't had many encounters with classical music, and in a time of increasing social fragmentation. As Glass put it regarding his music cum video-theatre piece with Robert Wilson Monsters of Grace, "Grace is a divine condition, and monsters is what we are."
Not a pretty thought, but a true one, or as Glass told Guerin in an interview on the Etudes on philipglass.com. "She plays from the heart." Isn't that what everything's about? Even the blurred C Major with A-flat Major around the edges in Etude #20. "#20 is actually my favorite," Andres observes. "Like in Schubert, where there's an amazing sense of epic closure, epically autumnal." Then there are the Glass Etudes, which go their own ways, private in public.
Mon., March 2 at 7:30 p.m., Davies Symphony Hall, SF. Tickets ($36-$99): sfperformances.org