Dutch composer Anthony Fiumara releases “Vitreous Body”, an album for percussion inspired by the music of Philip Glass.

Percussionist Fedor Teunisse, artistic director of Slagwerk Den Haag, one of the most important and long-standing percussion orchestras in the world – it was founded in The Hague in 1977 as Slagwerkgroep Den Haag [The Hague Percussion Group], but has been known under the shortened name of Slagwerk Den Haag or SDH since 2009 – commissioned Dutch composer Anthony Fiumara (Tilburg, 1968) in 2016 to organise the programme of a percussion concert in tribute to Philip Glass, on the occasion of the composer’s eightieth birthday. In addition to being a composer, Fiumara is also a musicologist, music journalist, radio broadcaster and artistic director of the Orkest De Volharding and the vocal quintet Compagnie Bischoff. He is also co-founder of the OUTPUT Festival – for electric guitar in the field of contemporary classical music. Within all these numerous musical activities, Fiumara had in the past made his own arrangements for works by other minimalist composers such as Steve Reich or John Adams, and when he received the commission for this programme he decided to create a series of his own works –Chorale, Petals, Remix, North Star and Vitreous Body – which would dialogue with two early works by Philip Glass, Music in Similar Motion (from 1969) and Mad Rush (from 1979), arranged by Fiumara to be performed expressly by SDH, given that, originally, the aforementioned pieces were not composed for percussion.

That programme was first performed by SDH on 18 February 2017 at the State Theatre in Arnhem and now, almost six years later, the Orange Mountain Music label is releasing a subsequent recording, made at the Korzo Theatre in The Hague between 13 and 15 January 2020.

In the booklet accompanying the disc Fiumara writes that “I have always been fascinated by the early and radical minimalismo of Philip Glass. It still amazes me that he could create such rich and long forms with such simple elements as scales and the omission and addition of a few notes.” He goes on to add: “I would categorize Glass’s sound as immersive and more dynamic – with the unpolished, extroverted energy of a rock band. Rigorous repetition makes short work of both teleology and narrativity. Purposeful linear progression gives way to processes. It is about experiencing a state, which can then slowly move to another state. Or not.”

Fiumara titled the cycle of pieces Vitreous Body, referring both to the American composer’s surname – glass – and to “to the transparency that I aimed for in this music-“ The Dutch composer explains that “while I love the rhythmic patterns, the long lines and the modality in Glass’s early music, I found it interesting to see that his legacy has led my work in a different direction. In the cycle Vitreous Body I made a small catalog of my language so far in six parts – inspired, of course, by Music in Twelve Parts. In Petals and Remix I use Renaissance music that I stretch in various ways or quote with the sounds and instruments of today. The slowness in Choral and North Star (a title I stole from Glass, though the music has got nothing to do with it) circling around a few tones that appear in different constellations. In the title piece, Vitreous Body, eight voices are moving slowly but surely downwards. This part is composed as a canon, I which each voice has a different tempo, creating a multitude of melodic cascades”.

In addition to offering the possibility of listening to very different versions of the two Philip Glass pieces (in the space of just two years, versions of Music in Similar Motion have been released, for electric guitar by Giacomo Baldelli and for cello by Maya Beiser, while Mad Rush has numerous versions for piano, including two very recent ones, published this past 2022, by the Spanish concert pianist Fabio Álvarez and the German Benedikt Björn Bagger, not to mention the original canonical versions, for organ or piano, by Glass himself), allows us to discover a composer who is not very prolific and, above all, under-represented on record, but of great personality and talent. The recording is available on Spotify, but will be released in physical format in spring, coinciding with SDH’s live performances of the album.