PHILIP GLASS (b.1937): Violin Concerto No. 2 “The American Four Seasons”, Violin Sonata.

Description: Written as a companion piece to Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, the 2010 concerto’s four movements are prefaced with violin solos in place of cadenzas, which form a set of nicely crafted neo-baroque pastiches in their own right, with the melodic tendency that has become more prevalent in Glass' music over the past decade or so to the fore. A mid-price offering to compete with the 2010 Orange Mountain first recording. The 2008 sonata is, as one would expect, tonal, with rippling, pulsating accompaniments underpinning the kind of extended melodic writing that has come to characterize his more recent music - still based on rhythm and chromatic harmonic progressions as structural elements, but reasserting the role of melody as an important expressive device. Piotr Plawner (violin), Gerardo Vila (piano - sonata), Bern Chamber Orchestra; Philippe Bach.