Philip Glass

Symphony No. 5

About this Album

When Philip Glass’s newly completed Symphony No. 5 received its world premiere at the 1999 Salzburg Festival, Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed called it “a glorious, inspiring work.” The Symphony, commissioned by the Salzburg Festival and conceived as a millennial celebration piece, is an epic 101-minute, 800-page work scored for orchestra, chorus, children’s choir, and five vocal soloists. It reflects on what Glass calls “the world’s greatest wisdom traditions.”

Working together with the Very Reverend James Parks Morton of the Interfaith Center of New York and Professor Kusumita P. Pedersen of St. Francis College, texts spanning more than 2,500 years and dozens of different cultures were culled from a variety of sources, including the Tibetan Book of the Dead, aboriginal and African chants, and the writings of American religious thinker and author Thomas Merton, among others. They have been translated into one language, English, from Greek, Hebrew, Sanskrit, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and a number of indigenous languages.

The libretto, taking English as its common language, serves to exemplify universal spiritual themes that transcend both time and culture. The 12-movement symphony is intended to illustrate the bridge between the past and the future, hence the subtitle: Requiem (death); Bardo (a Buddhist in-between state), and Nirmanakaya (a kind of enlightened spiritual rebirth). In a larger context the libretto reflects on the process of global transformation and evolution, beginning before the earth’s creation, passing through earthly life and on into paradise, culminating with a dedication to the future.

This recording features the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Morgan State University Choir, and Hungarian Radio Children’s Choir, conducted by Dennis Russell Davies. The featured vocal soloists are Ana Maria Martinez (soprano), Denyce Graves (mezzo-soprano), Michael Schade (tenor), Eric Owens (baritone), and Albert Dohmen (bass-baritone).