Philip Glass La Belle et la Bête

This elegantly packaged 10 disc retrospective surveys four decades of work by Philip Glass, from his earliest solo pieces to his world-renowned operas to his Oscar-nominated film scores. In music, words and pictures, it traces the evolution, as critic Tim Page puts it in his liner notes essay, of 'the first composer to win a wide, multi-generational audience in the opera house, the concert hall, the dance world, in film and in popular music-simultaneously.' The long-awaited release of this set follows this past spring's triumphal new staging of Glass's 1980 Satyagraha at the Metropolitan Opera House.

Katia et Marielle Labèque, the famous pianist sister duo with a career spanning more than fifty years, release their new album dedicated to the music of Philip Glass, completing his operatic triptych composed between 1993 and 1996, based on the films by Jean Cocteau. After their much-acclaimed recording of Les Enfants Terribles in 2020, the pianists now present the remaining two works in the Cocteau Trilogy: Orphée and La Belle et la Bête, arranged by Glass’ music director Michael Riesman for Katia and Marielle Labèque. Katia and Marielle Labèque will be touring extensively throughout 2024 and performing the program in several markets, including France, Germany, UK and Ireland.

Canadian violinist Angèle Dubeau and her ensemble La Pietà pay homage to Philip Glass with this disc of some of his music for strings, plus arrangements of other works of his. The arrangements are by Michael Reisman, who has collaborated closely with Glass since the period of Einstein on the Beach, so they are idiomatic and persuasively transfer the works to a new medium. Two of his arrangements, the Overture to La Belle et la Bête and The Hours Suite, taken from the film soundtrack, include an amplified arsenal of instruments, including piano, harp, and celeste.

This elegantly packaged 10 disc retrospective surveys four decades of work by Philip Glass, from his earliest solo pieces to his world-renowned operas to his Oscar-nominated film scores. In music, words and pictures, it traces the evolution, as critic Tim Page puts it in his liner notes essay, of 'the first composer to win a wide, multi-generational audience in the opera house, the concert hall, the dance world, in film and in popular music-simultaneously.' The long-awaited release of this set follows this past spring's triumphal new staging of Glass's 1980 Satyagraha at the Metropolitan Opera House.