CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Philip Glass: Einstein in Concert

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Thursday, December 6th, 2007 at 8:00 PM

Philip Glass & the Philip Glass Ensemble
Timothy Fain, Violin
Michael Riesman, Conductor
Lucinda Childs, Spoken Word
Melvin van Peebles, Spoken Word

Carnegie Hall presents a concert of music from Philip Glass's legendary 20th-century opera, Einstein on the Beach, performed live for the first time in 15 years by the Philip Glass Ensemble with chorus and violinist Timothy Fain. Produced for Carnegie Hall by Pomegranate Arts.

Nonesuch at Carnegie

Program Notes:

By Tim Page

Portions of Einstein on the Beach received their Carnegie Hall premier on June 1, 1978, when the Philip Glass Ensemble and Gregg Smith Singers performed Act I, Scene 1, and Act IV, Scene 3 (Finale).

Einstein on the Beach (1976) is a pivotal work in the oeuvre of Philip Glass. It is the first, longest, and most famous of the composer’s operas, yet it is in almost every way unrepresentative of them. Einstein was, by design, a glorious “one-shot”—a work that invented its context, form, and language, and then explored them so exhaustively that further development would have been redundant. But, by its own radical example, Einstein prepared the way—it gave permission—for much of what has happened in music theater since its premiere.

Einstein broke all the rules of opera. It was in four interconnected acts and five hours long, with no intermissions (the audience was invited to wander in and out at liberty during performances). The acts were intersticed by what Glass and Wilson called “knee plays”—brief interludes that also provided time for scenery changes. The text consisted of numbers, solfege syllables, and some cryptic poems by Christopher Knowles, a young, neurologically impaired man with whom Wilson had worked as an instructor of disturbed children for the New York public schools. To this were added short texts by choreographer Lucinda Childs and Samuel M. Johnson, an actor who played the judge in the “Trial” scenes and the bus driver in the finale. There were references to the trial of Patricia Hearst (which was underway during the creation of the opera); to the mid-’70s radio lineup on New York’s WABC; to the popular song “Mr. Bojangles”; to the Beatles; and to teen idol David Cassidy. Einstein sometimes seemed a study in sensory overload, meaning everything and nothing.

From its beginnings, Einstein was truly a team effort. At the time of its creation, Glass was writing long concert pieces for the Philip Glass Ensemble while working as a plumber and driving a taxi. By the mid-’70s, the Ensemble had built a cult following in the lofts and galleries of Manhattan’s nascent Soho district, and Glass had begun amassing credits as a theater composer by providing scores for the experimental Mabou Mines Company.

Glass became aware of Wilson’s stage work during an overnight performance of the 12-hour The Life and Times of Josef Stalin, presented at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1973. He was attracted to what he called Wilson’s sense of “theatrical time, space, and movement.” The two men promptly determined to collaborate on a theatrical opus based on the life of a historic figure. Wilson proposed Chaplin, then Hitler; Glass countered with Gandhi. Finally, Glass and Wilson agreed upon Albert Einstein.

“As a child, Einstein had been one of my heroes,” the composer reflected in his book, Music by Philip Glass (Harper and Row, 1987). “Growing up just after World War II, as I had, it was impossible not to know who he was. The emphatic, if catastrophic, beginnings of the nuclear age had made atomic energy the most widely discussed issue of the day.”

“Philip and I immediately agreed on the overall length of time we wanted to fill—four to five hours,” Robert Wilson said in an interview. “We decided that each scene would be about 20 minutes long and that we would connect the scenes together with what I call ‘knee plays’ (the knee is a joint that links two similar elements, hence ‘knee plays’). I did a series of drawings and Philip set them to music.”

Wilson stresses that this marked a complete break with traditional theater. “In the past, theater has always been bound by literature. Einstein on the Beach is not. There is no plot—although there are many references to Einstein—and the visual book can stand on its own. We put together the opera the way an architect would build a building. The structure of the music was completely interwoven with the stage action and with the lighting. Everything was all of a piece.”

The Glass-Wilson opera was intended as a metaphorical look at Einstein: scientist, humanist, amateur musician—and the man whose theories, for better and for worse, led to the splitting of the atom. Although it is difficult to discern a “plot” in Einstein, the climactic scene clearly depicted nuclear holocaust: with its Renaissance-pure vocal lines, the blast of amplified instruments, a steady eighth-note pulse, and the hysterical chorus chanting numerals as quickly and frantically as possible, it seemed to many a musical reflection of the anxious, fin-de-siècle late ’70s.

Einstein on the Beach brought the composer fame—and notoriety. It was presented throughout Europe in the summer of 1976, then brought to the Metropolitan Opera House for two sold-out performances in November 1976. Then, as later, audience response was mixed; Glass’s works were presented to boos and bravos.

The flutist Ransom Wilson, who would later conduct and record some of Glass’s music, has left a vivid impression of a New York performance of Einstein on the Beach, which summarizes the reactions of many initiates:

“As I listened to that five-hour performance, I experienced an amazing transformation. At first I was bored—very bored. The music seemed to have no direction, almost giving the impression of a gigantic phonograph with a stuck needle. I was first irritated and then angry that I’d been taken in by this crazy composer who obviously doted on repetition. I thought of leaving. Then, with no conscious awareness, I crossed a threshold and found that the music was touching me, carrying me with it. I began to perceive within it a whole world where change happens so slowly and carefully that each new harmony or rhythmic addition or subtraction seemed monumental.”

Though he loathes the term, Glass is often classified as a “minimalist” composer. Much of his mature work is based on the extended repetition of brief, elegant melodic fragments that weave in and out of an aural tapestry. Listening to his music has been compared to watching a modern painting that initially appears static but metamorphoses slowly as one concentrates. Particularly in his early works, Glass limited compositional material to a few elements, which were then subjected to a variety of transformational processes. A listener quickly learned not to expect Western musical events—sforzandos, sudden diminuendos. Instead, one was immersed in a sort of sonic weather that twists, turns, surrounds, and develops.

The score for Einstein has many beauties: the pulsing, inevitable forward motion of “Train” (with its climactic exploration of a tricky, elegant modulation between F minor and E major, reprised throughout the opera); the slow, droning, quasi-hypnotic use of additive process in “Trial”; the furious, rhythmical reiterations of the dances; the sweet, gently rocking, solfege in the duet “Night Train”; the loopy “Prematurely Air-Conditioned Supermarket” speech in “Trial 2 / Prison” that leads, finally, to one of the most ecstatic outbursts of ensemble playing in the opera; the curious, détaché aria for solo electric organ and soprano, “Bed”; and then the apocalyptic “Spaceship” movement. Ultimately, “Knee Play 5” brings it all back home and the mammoth opera ends rather as it began.

Einstein on the Beach was revived in 1984, and then again in 1992, by International Production Associates for extended tours, culminating in residencies at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. In 1989, Achim Fryer attempted a new visual interpretation of the Glass music at the Stuttgart State Opera, which was generally judged unsuccessful. It is in its original form—as a joint venture between Glass and Wilson—that Einstein has become one of the most famous operatic events of the century.

“I don’t think Einstein has lost a bit of its fascination,” Harvey Lichtenstein, the director of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, said in 1993. “Indeed, I think I’m more interested in it today than I’ve ever been. In the past I’d watch some of a performance, then get up and walk around for a while. The last few performances I’ve seen, I couldn’t budge from my seat.”

Tim Page is the Pulitzer Prize–winning chief classical music critic for the Washington Post.

Philip Glass & the Philip Glass Ensemble
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Philip Glass is a graduate of the University of Chicago and The Juilliard School. In the early 1960s, Glass spent two years of intensive study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and, while there, earned money by transcribing Ravi Shankar’s Indian music into Western notation. Upon his return to New York, he applied these Eastern techniques to his own music. By 1974, Glass had a number of significant and innovative projects, creating a large collection of new music for his performing group, the Philip Glass Ensemble, and for the Mabou Mines Theater Company, which he co-founded. This period culminated in Music in Twelve Parts, followed by the landmark opera, Einstein on the Beach, created with Robert Wilson in 1976.

Since Einstein, Glass has expanded his repertoire to include music for opera, dance, theater, chamber ensemble, orchestra, and film. His score for Martin Scorsese’s Kundun received an Academy Award nomination, while his score for Peter Weir’s The Truman Show won him a Golden Globe. His film score for Stephen Daldry’s The Hours received Golden Globe, Grammy, and Academy Award nominations, and won a BAFTA in Film Music from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Original scores for the critically acclaimed films The Illusionist and Notes on a Scandal (for which Philip received an Oscar nomination) were released last year.

In 2004 Glass premiered the new work Orion—a collaboration between Glass and six other international artists, which opened in Athens as part of the cultural celebration of the 2004 Olympics in Greece—and his Piano Concerto No. 2 (After Lewis and Clark) with the Omaha Symphony Orchestra. Glass’s latest symphonies, Symphony No. 7 and Symphony No. 8, premiered in 2005 with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, and the Bruckner Orchester Linz at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, respectively. The year 2005 also saw the premiere of Waiting for the Barbarians, an opera based on the book by Nobel Prize winner J. M. Coetzee. Glass’s orchestral tribute to Indian spiritual leader Sri Ramakrishna, The Passion of Ramakrishna, premiered in 2006 at Orange County Performing Arts Center.

Glass maintained a dense creative schedule throughout 2007. Several highly anticipated works premiered this year, including an opera about the end of the Civil War entitled Appomattox (October, San Francisco Opera) and Book of Longing (June, Luminato Festival). In April, the English National Opera, in conjunction with the Metropolitan Opera, remounted Glass’s Satyagraha in London, which will appear in New York in April of 2008. Glass continues to tour regularly with the Philip Glass Ensemble.

PHILIP GLASS ENSEMBLE

Established by composer Philip Glass, the Philip Glass Ensemble gave its first performance in May 1969 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. Embraced first by the visual arts community working in SoHo in the early 1970s, the early concerts performed by the Philip Glass Ensemble were considered visual as well as musical events, and were often performed in art galleries, artist lofts, and museum spaces rather than traditional performing art centers.

Since that time, the members of the PGE have become known as the premier performers of the music of Philip Glass and continue to be an inspiration for new work. Over the past 30 years, the group has performed on four continents in some of the most prestigious music festivals and concert venues throughout the world. They have been featured in Philip Glass’s opera Einstein on the Beach, as well as the music theater projects Hydrogen Jukebox, 1000 Airplanes on the Roof, The Photographer, La Belle et la Bête, and Monsters of Grace.

The Philip Glass Ensemble tours regularly with selections from Philip on Film, a festival of film scores by Philip Glass played live in concert with screenings of the original films: Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, Naqoyqatsi, La Belle et la Bête, and Dracula.

In June 2004 in Athens, Glass premiered Orion, a new work for ensemble and world musicians commissioned by the Cultural Olympiad 2001–2004. Following its world premiere, Orion was performed throughout Greece, Italy, France, London, Australia, as well as cities throughout the US.

Timothy Fain, Violin
Avery Fisher Career Grant-winning violinist Tim Fain was selected as one of Symphony magazine’s “Up-and-Coming Young Musicians of 2006,” and was heard as the “voice” of Richard Gere’s violin in Fox Searchlight’s feature film Bee Season. Recipient of the coveted Young Concert Artists International Award, he has appeared as soloist with groups worldwide—from the Orchestra of St. Luke’s to The Mexico City Philharmonic—in works ranging from Beethoven and Tchaikovsky to Danielpour and Glass. As first violinist of the Rossetti Quartet, he has toured with Musicians from Marlboro, performed as a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and appeared at the Spoleto, Ravinia, Moab, and Santa Fe Festivals. He was hailed for his appearance as guest soloist with the New York City Ballet, and has toured nationally and abroad with the Mark Morris Dance Group and Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Dance Company. Passionate about jazz, he has appeared with composer-saxophonist Patrick Zimmerli at the Jazz Standard and with composer-violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain at The Cutting Room. A native of Santa Monica, California, Tim Fain is a graduate of The Curtis Institute of Music and The Juilliard School, where he studied with Victor Danchenko and Robert Mann, respectively.

Michael Riesman, Conductor
Michael Riesman—composer, conductor, keyboardist, and record producer—is the Music Director of the Philip Glass Ensemble. He has conducted many recordings of works by Glass, including Einstein on the Beach, Glassworks, The Photographer, Songs From Liquid Days, Dance Pieces, Music in 12 Parts, and Passages, as well as almost every Glass film soundtrack: Koyaanisqatsi, Mishima, Powaqqatsi, The Thin Blue Line, Anima Mundi, A Brief History of Time, Candyman, Kundun, The Truman Show, Naqoyqatsi, The Fog of War, Secret Window, Taking Lives, Undertow, Roving Mars, and The Illusionist. He was the pianist for the Academy Award–nominated soundtrack for The Hours, and has also recorded a solo piano arrangement of that score. He has received two Grammy nominations as conductor, for The Photographer and Kundun. He has conducted and performed on albums by Paul Simon (Hearts and Bones), Scott Johnson (Patty Hearst), Mike Oldfield (Platinum), Ray Manzarek (Carmina Burana), David Bowie (BlackTie/White Noise), and Gavin Bryars (Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet). Mr. Riesman released an album, Formal Abandon, on the Rizzoli label, which originated from a commission by choreographer Lucinda Childs. His film scores include Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, Pleasantville (1976), and Christian Blackwood’s Signed: Lino Brocka. Mr. Riesman studied at Mannes College of Music and Harvard University (where he received a PhD), and has taught at Harvard and SUNY Purchase. He has been composer-in-residence at the Marlboro Music Festival and at the Tanglewood Festival, where he conducted performances of his own works.

Lucinda Childs, Spoken Word
Lucinda Childs began her career as choreographer and performer in 1963 as an original member of the Judson Dance Theater in New York. After forming her own dance company in 1973, Ms. Childs collaborated with Robert Wilson and Philip Glass on the opera Einstein on the Beach, participating as leading performer and choreographer; she also took part in the opera’s revivals in 1984 and 1992. Since 1979, Ms. Childs has collaborated with a number of composers and designers, including John Adams and Frank Gehry, on a series of large-scale productions, including Dance (with music by Philip Glass and a film/decor by Sol LeWitt), for which Ms. Childs was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Since 1981, Ms. Childs has received a number of commissions from major ballet companies, including the Paris Opéra Ballet, Berlin Opera Ballet, Ballet du l’Opéra du Rhin, and the Boston Ballet. She has choreographed countless ballets, including Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe; Bartok’s Mandarin Merveilleux; Concerto with music by Henryk Górecki; and Opus One with music by Alban Berg.

Since 1992, Ms. Childs has worked extensively in the domain of opera as both choreographer and director, including productions of Salome, Macbeth, Moïse und Aaron, Zaïde, Lohengrin, Orfeo ed Euridice, Parsifal, and John Adams’s new opera, Doctor Atomic. In 2004 Ms. Childs was appointed by the French Government to the rank of Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. This past year, Ms Childs has choreographed a Ten Part Suite for the Boston Ballet with music by Arcangelo Corelli, which premiered in Boston at the Wang Center.

Melvin van Peebles, Spoken Word