Philip Glass: Symphony No. 1 ''Low'' (Music of David Bowie and Brian Eno) (1993)

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"Philip (Glass) has put more of himself in this new album, but the irony is that I believe that he's actually put his finger on more of my original voice. Hearing this material is a bit like being introduced to a brother or sister that you've been told you had, and you weren't really aware of their existence. And when you do meet them, obviously the very familiarity of the family features registers, but there's a whole life and all these things have grown up without your knowledge. The music has characteristics that I immediately recognize, but it has its own life. It has nothing to do with me. It's had all these experiences that I didn't know about. It really runs the gamut of emotions, from deep despair in "Neuköln" through to that upward spiraling of "V2 Schneider," and those two particularly for me capture really what I was trying to do. It really excited me. It was though Philip had fed into my voice...but somehow had arrived, I feel, a lot nearer to the gut feeling of what I was trying to do." David Bowie

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The Low Symphony, composed in the Spring of 1992, is based on the record Low by David Bowie and Brian Eno. Their record consisted of a number of songs and instrumentals using techniques that were similar to procedures used by composers working in new and experimental music. As such, this record was widely appreciated by musicians working both in the field of "pop" music and in experimental music and was a landmark work of that period. Glass further states, "My approach was to treat the themes very much as if they were my own and allow their transformations to follow my own compositional bent when possible. In practice, however, Bowie and Eno's music certainly influenced how I worked, leading me to sometimes surprising musical conclusions. In the end I think I arrived at something of a real collaboration between my music and theirs." (Philip Glass, New York City, 1992)

Tracklist

1 Subterraneans (15:07)
2 Some Are (11:17)
3 Warszawa (15:57)

Brooklyn Philarmonic Orchestra
Dennis Rusell Davis, conductor

Point Music 438-150-2