“To Toronto falls the honor of introducing the world to Philip Glass’s Symphony No. 13,” writes William Littler in Saturday’s (3/5) Toronto Star (Canada). “That is because Ottawa’s National Arts Centre Orchestra has chosen to give the music its world premiere March 30 at [Toronto’s] Roy Thomson Hall before taking it to New York’s Carnegie Hall and then to the National Arts Centre’s Southam Hall. Glass … numbers among the most prolific composers of his generation…. From a compositional point of view, 20th- and 21st-century composers have certainly been less preoccupied with writing symphonies than their 18th- and 19th-century predecessors. Igor Stravinsky … wrote only one long and two short ones…. Glass’s 13 is an impressive number by modern standards…. None [of his symphonies have] entered the standard repertory. There are those who would argue that his later music has increasingly departed from his classic minimalist style to sound less original and more mainstream…. So what can we expect from ‘Symphony No. 13?’ As the saying goes, expect the unexpected. What we certainly can expect is something strikingly different from the second symphonies of Schumann and Brahms featured on a recent National Arts Centre Orchestra two-CD album.”
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