Lenin's Brother by Philip Pomper

Though he may not be a piano superstar, Bruce Brubaker is clearly a musician to watch. On this recording of solo piano works by Philip Glass and John Cage, Brubaker somehow shifts between these two very different modernist composers to create a seamless disc of mesmerizing keyboard music. While Glass's own playing is often precise and austere, Brubaker is a different beast altogether. With him, we get a hint of Impressionism and a sense of contemplation with each note. The five parts of Metamorphosis are given shades of melancholy, along with frenzy; on the expansive "Mad Rush," Brubaker goes wild where he has to, but always returns to the piece's calming, sweet center. The piano music of John Cage is limited to just two cuts–"A Room" and "Dream"–but they, too, are hauntingly beautiful (especially the latter, longer piece).

This very appealing disc of post-minimal solo piano music, played by Bruce Brubaker, includes two multi-movements works by William Duckworth and Philip Glass. Composer and music critic Kyle Gann describes Duckworth's The Time Curve Preludes (1977-1978), which use repetitive structures, an essentially tonal harmonic language, and a limited amount of musical material, as the first examples of post-minimal music, because of their brevity, which runs counter to the element of minimalism in which musical changes unfold very slowly over a long time span. The preludes are in two books of 12 movements each, and Brubaker plays the first book. Although they rarely involve exact repetition, each prelude takes a musical idea and examines it from a variety of subtly shifting perspectives. The preludes generally have limited harmonic movement and are frequently built on drones, so they tend to create a sense of stasis and equilibrium, sometimes quietly meditative and sometimes busy. Duckworth's quirky hallmark mixture of major and minor modes is evident in many of the preludes. The harmonic movement and gestures of Glass' Six Etudes for Piano, from 1994, make the pieces immediately recognizable as his work.

The piano may not be the ideal medium for capturing the expressive possibilities of Glass' style of minimalism, but pianist Bruce Brubaker selects pieces that work well on the instrument. Part of the problem with hearing Glass on the piano is forgetting the sound of his ensemble, and the variety of colors (and volume) they have imparted to similar music. Brubaker begins his recital of works by Glass and Alvin Curran with his transcription of "Knee Play 4" from Einstein on the Beach. It is in fact a lovely piece on the piano if one can put the spectacular power and tonal range of the instrumental version out of one's mind. "Opening" from Glassworks, originally scored for piano, works beautifully on the instrument, and flows as naturally as the C major Prelude from Book I of The Well Tempered Clavier. The two pieces by Curran, Hope Street Tunnel Blues III and Inner Cities II, use a syntax similar to Glass, with a more dissonant tonal vocabulary. Hope Street Tunnel Blues III has ample kinetic energy that gives it an exhilarating momentum.