Glass: Symphony no 5 (Choral): Requiem, Bardo, Nirmanakaya
Along with being perhaps the best-known contemporary classical composer,Philip  Glassis also one of the most intensely prolific--almost frighteningly so.  Scarcely a season seems to pass without a major premiere--and, as Glass himself  probably would be the first to admit, this factory level of productivity can  lead to disappointingly uneven results. His music in particular requires an  effort to separate the wheat from the chaff. TheSymphony No. 5began  life as a commission from the Salzburg Festival to celebrate the new millennium.  Glass took the occasion to reflect on the "process of global evolution," and  culled texts from the gamut of world religions and cultures; these are set for  various combinations of five vocal soloists, large chorus, and children's choir  in a 12-movement work that lasts nearly 100 minutes--all of which is scored with  a brilliant orchestral palette. The symphony's subtitle ("Requiem, Bardo,  Nirmanakaya"), with its mix of Western and Buddhist terms, reflects Glass's  multicultural ambitions, as well as the work's tripartite passage: from the past  and stories of creation through consideration of death and a state of  expectation to enlightened rebirth in the future. Together with familiar Bible  verses are texts from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Koran, Hindu scriptures,  Rumi, a Bulu creation story, and much more.It all could have made for an embarrassingly muddled, New Agey smorgasbord.  Actually, however, it's one of the more thoroughly convincing works that Glass  has created; it builds bit by bit, mosaic by mosaic, in a cumulative effect that  becomes especially powerful in the stark contrasts of the final movements, which  include a depiction of paradise that calls to mind the Klimt-like heaven ofMahler's "Symphony of a  Thousand."Glass returns to some of the motifs fromthe CIVIL warSproject,  and the orchestral scope and vocal styling recall the grandiloquence of that  period. But there's an even greater sense of play with timbral coloring, and a  notable preoccupation with the quieter regions of the dynamic spectrum, as well  as fascinating moments of harmonic complexity. Glass veteranDennis Russell  Daviesled the  Symphony's 1999 world premiere, and manages to maintain a similar level of  excitement in the studio; he gives the score a sense of expanse and space to  unfold, and masterfully aligns Glass's various layerings of musical forces. For  all of the inevitable comparisons that might be made with thattouchstone of humanistic choral  symphonies, theSymphony No. 5suggests not so much a contemporary  take on Beethoven's Ninth as hisMissa Solemnis--a cosmic  testament that's full of gestures both grand and intimate.--Thomas May