Review: Philip Glass Is Celebrated, but Not With His Best

NEW YORK — During the past decade, Carnegie Hall’s composer-in-residence position has tended to go to veteran iconoclasts whose innovations have taken root in the broader classical scene. Meredith Monk, Louis Andriessen and Kaija Saariaho, for example, have all been celebrated with the concert series that come with the Carnegie post, the Debs Composer’s Chair.

I’ve noticed, listening to a range of these series, that programs devoted exclusively to the chosen composer’s works are often impressive. Less satisfying, on the whole, have been the concerts in which the composer is tucked — or, more to the point, jammed — into a broader concept or next to other works.

This year, Philip Glass holds the chair. And Tuesday evening was his turn with that latter format. In its Carnegie debut, the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra and its music director, Carlos Miguel Prieto, played two of his lesser-known orchestral pieces — “Days and Nights in Rocinha” (1997) and the Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists and Orchestra (2000) — on a program that also included Silvestre Revueltas’ “La Noche de los Mayas.”

You don’t need to squint to identify the connecting thread here. The incandescent Revueltas suite, derived from one of his film scores, is a touchstone of the Mexican repertoire; pairing it with Glass’ tribute to Rocinha, a Rio de Janeiro favela, gives the program a vaguely Latin American theme. The Concerto Fantasy doesn’t share that theme, even vaguely. But it does spotlight percussionists, which puts it in a stylistic neighborhood adjacent to some of Revueltas’ higher-octane passages.

It’s neat enough on paper. But the problem is that these two Glass pieces aren’t close to his most interesting.

The Concerto Fantasy’s beginning, with its uncanny similarity to the stomping opening of the “Mission: Impossible” theme, is, at best, distracting. (Glass has denied plagiarizing, saying he doesn’t watch television.) More disappointing is how nothing else in the work manages to be as melodically memorable. During the Louisiana Philharmonic’s performance, the strings were frequently swamped by the timpanists (Jim Atwood and Paul Yancich, stationed at the front of Carnegie’s stage).

Balance issues also managed to blunt the impact of the Revueltas work, which opened the concert. In its first movement, the low brass instruments covered other sections. During the final movement’s percussion-driven fusillades, the piano had difficulty punching through.

After intermission, there was more of a sense of this orchestra’s refinement. In Glass’ “Rocinha,” Prieto’s feel for subtle shifts in dynamics created an environment both dreamy and dramatic. The piece does not storm out of the gate. It builds slowly, as successive revisions of the opening melody are passed between sections.

When all the players converge, that core melodic material still lingers, but new harmonic relationships have flowered, suggesting a congenial evening of revelry. Even during this almost-rowdy climax, the strings projected a graceful, shimmering clarity, and helped elevate a minor work into a minor marvel.

This same polished ensemble sound reappeared during the orchestra’s encore: “Antrópolis,” a new work by Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz. The performance of this strongly conceived piece made me want to hear the Philharmonic play some better-quality symphonic Glass, or a concert performance of one of his operas, many of which have rarely been heard in New York.