Philip Glass (b. 1937)
The Complete Piano Etudes
Vanessa Wagner (piano)
rec. 2025, Vincennes, Coeur de ville Auditorium, France
InFiné IF1099 [2 CDs: 132]

This is an exceptionally satisfying survey of the Glass etudes, played with great lyricism and interpretative depth.  Eschewing the sometimes machine-like characteristics of minimalism, French pianist Vanessa Wagner channels a meditative purity of tone while revealing strong emotional currents within the pieces. Her years of studying and recording romantic and impressionist music (including Schumann, Debussy and Ravel) inform her approach, lending this music a rich palette of colours and atmospheres.

Wagner’s performance is marked by a lyrical sensibility and a nuanced touch that foregrounds the emotional and structural subtleties of Glass’s writing. With this approach, her interpretations depart from the clarity and technical virtuosity of Maki Namekawa in her celebrated 2014 recording (OMM0098) and instead tend towards a romantic introspection that perhaps aligns more with the traditions of Chopin or Debussy than with minimalism.  Nowhere is this more evident than in etudes 5 and 8, both of which are rendered almost overwhelmingly beautiful here.

Her dynamic shaping and pedalling are conservative but deliberate, and she tends to let pause, resonance and harmonic overtones do the expressive work rather than obvious dynamic swells. This approach presents the listener with a more relaxed, meditative experience of some of these pieces.  As a case in point, Wagner’s performance of etude 7 clocks in at an expansive 12:31, a full four minutes longer than Namekawa’s recording (8:28). In general, Wagner emphasises the inner voices of the middle register along with the lower range melodies, and this contrasts with other recordings (including Namekawa) which have a more ‘outer driven’ leaner emphasis on the top lines.  Among extant performances, Víkingur Ólafsson’s (incomplete) recording of the etudes on Deutsche Grammophon (review) is most similar in contemplative tone.

Overall, this is a serious, carefully wrought cycle: thoughtful, texturally alert, and sonically generous. It’s as much a portrait of the pianist as it is of Glass’s music — ideal for listeners who want to hear the études as living, evolving piano works rather than technical studies. The sound recording is excellent.  Generally the booklet notes are rather underwhelming, and the performance details sparse – unfortunate given the consistently outstanding quality of the performance.  I will be returning to these performances again and again.

Peter Bright

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