‘Maya Beiser x Philip Glass’ Review: Reforging Minimalism

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A cellist’s rendition of eight works by the influential avant-garde composer is enhanced by her use of multitracking and dimensional tone.

Maya Beiser

Photo: Ioulex

 

In 2011, during her TED Talk “A Cello With Many Voices,” virtuoso cellist Maya Beiser discussed growing up on a kibbutz in northern Israel and how, as she practiced masterworks by Bach, she would hear the sound of Muslim prayers drifting over from a neighboring Arab village. Ms. Beiser has become well-known for a remarkably diverse repertoire, ranging from Bach and Beethoven to Howlin’ Wolf and David Bowie, but the unifying aspect of her work is her devotional and direct tone. Decades into her career, it’s easy to imagine her accompanying those prayers she overheard as a girl.

That tone is a highlight of her new recording, “Maya Beiser x Philip Glass” (Islandia), a collection of eight pieces by the composer renowned for such modern classics as “Einstein on the Beach,” “Satyagraha” and the soundtracks to director Godfrey Reggio’s Qatsi trilogy—“Koyaanisqatsi” (1983), “Powaqqatsi” (1988) and “Naqoyqatsi” (2002)—films that meditate on the havoc an obsession with technology can wreak on the Earth. But Ms. Beiser is no technophobe. Far from it. 

She began working with loops and additional tracking in October 2003 for a performance of Steve Reich’s “Cello Counterpoint” at Carnegie Hall, and she has made the technique a focal point of her arsenal, successfully applying it to both popular and classical repertoire. Her approach is revolutionizing the way classical compositions are performed. In the past decade, Max Richter has utilized similar techniques in the works of Vivaldi, and Olafur Arnalds and Alice Sara Ott have engaged the repertoire of Chopin in a similar fashion. Composer and cellist Zoë Keating has created and performed stellar works using electronic effects.

 

Ms. Beiser’s new 65-minute album begins with two of Mr. Glass’s renowned “Etudes,” which the composer began writing for solo piano in the ’90s after many years of performing with his ensemble and mounting larger-scale works. Her multitracked presentation of the gently meditative “Etude No. 5” and the gracefully refined “Etude No. 2” transforms them into a dialogue between the notes and their pianistic resonance without losing any of the intimate atmosphere.

“Mad Rush” follows; the piece, written on and for the organ at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine to be played during the Dalai Lama’s first North American appearance in 1979, was later adapted for piano and used in the 2016 film “The Last Dalai Lama.” Ms. Beiser’s approach deftly highlights the shimmering layers and undulating arpeggios that are among the defining characteristics of Mr. Glass’s work

Composed in 1969, “Music in Similar Motion” is characteristic of Minimalism, the style for which Mr. Glass and Mr. Reich became the public faces. It’s a series of repeated phrases, each starting a fourth above the previous one. Ms. Beiser presents a furious rendition of the work, highlighted by a rugged tone and augmented by the reverberations of her instrument and occasional percussion sounds made with it.

In 2005, Mr. Glass invited Ms. Beiser to tour with his Philip Glass Ensemble for a series of concerts where music from “Naqoyqatsi” was performed; the final four pieces on the new recording are from that work. Each composition—the title track, “Massman,” “New World” and “Old World”—was written with orchestral detail in mind. On the first of these four, Ms. Beiser’s multitracked cellos create a lush backing that contrasts with the sweeter sound of her lead lines. It’s more pointed and direct than on the film soundtrack, which featured a softly swelling backing and a more reserved cello lead from Yo-Yo Ma. Ms. Beiser’s take on “Massman” is more concise in presentation and more consistent in tone than the original. “New World” is transformed with a call and response between a hopeful solo cello and a menacing, seemingly skeptical backing. “Old World” is faithful to the film score, with Ms. Beiser’s cello conveying a wariness toward the times ahead quite unlike her real-world embrace of the future and its technology. 

In a recent email exchange, Ms. Beiser wrote that she was inspired by multitracking from two disparate sources: the work of composers like Mr. Reich and a recording she may have first heard growing up, Bill Evans’s “Conversations With Myself” (Verve, 1963), a collection of works where the famed pianist plays along with pre-recorded versions of himself. Fittingly, during her TED talk, Ms. Beiser said, “The excitement from multitracking comes from the attempt to build and create a whole universe with many diverse layers, all generated from a single source. . . . I want to create endless possibilities with this cello.”