Louis Glass - Piano Works Vol.1

Louis GLASS (1864-1936)

Piano Works Vol.1

Jakob Alsgaard Bahr (piano)

Recorded June 30-July 3, 2022 at Hjorrin Gymnasium Denmark

First recording of Danish Piano Music. Louis Glass was born in 1864. His childhood home was full of music. His father, Christian Henrik Glass, was a prominent and highly recognised music educator whose primary instrument was the piano, though he was also an organist. In 1877, he founded his own music conservatory, which focused on piano playing and soon gained a good reputation. The piano works of Louis Glass make up a significant part of his collected works. Aside from arrangements of orchestral works in different piano editions, the many two-handed piano pieces appear as either single movements or as part of collections. The collections of piano works include no fewer than 12 opus numbers with a total of 75 movements from Glass' entire output.

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Classicstoday.com readers may have read my colleague David Hurwitz’s understandably scathing reviews of Louis Glass’ symphonic works. Words like “tensionless”, “generic”, “unoriginal”, and “boring” gain new meaning after you encounter such anti-masterpieces like Glass’ so-called “Swastika” Symphony No. 5 (yes, I’m not joking!), or the meandering late-Romantic clichés of his Symphony No. 3. However, the Danish composer is completely at home in the realm of piano miniatures.

True, he’s not the most memorable tunesmith in the shed, yet nearly each little work on this disc is charming, well crafted, and succinct. I’ll give some examples: The main repeated motive of Undervejs (from the cycle I det Fri Op. 20) catches your ear yet keeps you guessing, while Julemorgen (Klaverstykker Op. 55 No. 1) is a gorgeous and stately chorale prelude. Other pieces from that cycle include a Scherzino that oddly foreshadows “The Lonely Goatherd” from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music, and the fetchingly asymmetric Ecossaise. And had Grieg recomposed Schubert, we’d have Glass’ wistful Vals Mignon.

Danacord is fortunate to have so sensitive, idiomatically attuned, and committed an interpreter as Jakob Alsgaard Bahr. His feeling for character, tone color, and mood commands attention, making a case for a composer who no longer needs to be called “The Wrong Glass”, at least where his piano music is concerned.