Joshua Kosman's review of last night's Appomattox premiere:
For all its rhythmic vitality - and conductor Dennis Russell Davies, making a long overdue company debut, brought out this quality superbly - Glass' music is not particularly well-suited to dramatic action.
Its trademark repetitions - even in a late work like this, where the repetitive impulse is often subjugated to a need for forward motion - and moody minor harmonies conjure up either a stylized world of ritual and pageantry or a vein of emotional reflection.
And yet, Glass' music can have a dramatic cast to it e.g. Koyannisqatsi. It may be that instead of establishing narrative flow, all that forward motion leads to stasis e.g. Einstein on the Beach.
