Philip Glass: Piano Sonata Jenny Lin

• Philip Glass (b. 1937): Piano Sonata:
• 1 Glass: Piano Sonata: 1st movement 07:25
• 2 Glass: Piano Sonata: 2nd movement 09:16
• 3 Glass: Piano Sonata: 3rd movement 08:33
• Total Runtime 25:14

Info for Philip Glass: Piano Sonata

Pianist Jenny Lin follows two highly acclaimed albums of music by Philip Glass with a recording of the Piano Sonata, a dramatic work featuring his hallmark polyrhythms.

The Piano Sonata (2019) is about 30 minutes long and is cast in three movements. Glass says it is a piece “bursting with ideas.” He claims that the piece is related to his work of the past several years like his Symphony No.12 (2019) or his Percussion Quartet (2018) which were pieces that addressed ways that instruments play material. However while Glass was working on these pieces he said, “I began to write in a new way. I began to see how the music unraveled. It turns out that the piano is the best place to work out these kinds of things. This [the Piano Sonata] is the most sophisticated form of these ideas.”

"Lin shows a deep understanding and love for Glass’s music as well as the willingness to do new things with it." (American Record Guide)

"Lin offers some of the widest dynamic ranges to be heard on recordings of Glass' keyboard and chamber music, and her performances are sweeping and powerful." (AllMusic Guide)

"Glass is stereotypically expected to be performed in metronomically precise rhythms and even, or at least terraced, dynamics. Conversely, Lin’s playing is unusually expressive, inclusive of the use of rhythmic flexibility and graduated dynamic phrasing." (Fanfare)

Jenny Lin, piano

Jenny Lin
is one of the most respected young pianists today, admired for her adventurous programming and charismatic stage presence. Her ability to combine classical and contemporary literature has brought her to the attention of international critics and audiences. She has been acclaimed for her “remarkable technical command” and “a gift for melodic flow” by The New York Times. The Washington Post praises “Lin’s confident fingers… spectacular technique… “, “…surely one of the most interesting pianists in America right now…” and Gramophone Magazine has hailed her as “an exceptionally sensitive pianist”. Martha Argerich wrote: “Miss Jenny Lin is a very gifted young musician and a brilliant pianist.”

Jenny’s orchestral engagements have included Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy with Collegiate Chorale and American Symphony, Valentin Silvestrov’s Metamusik with Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Manuel de Falla’s Nights in the Garden of Spain with La Orquesta Sinfónica de Gijón; Ernest Bloch’s Concerto Grosso No. 1 with SWR Rundfunkorchester; world premiere of Stefano Gervasoni’s Piano Concerto with Orchestra Sinfonica Nationale della RAI, and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan. She has also worked with NDR Radiophilharmonie, Flemish Radio Orchestra, Nürnberger Symphoniker, Spoleto Festival Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, and performed with conductors such as Lothar Zagrosek, James Bagwell, Jiri Starek, Urs Schneider, Alexander Mickelthwate, Peter Bay, Jac van Steen, Ovidiu Balan, Wen-Pin Chien, Kek-Tjiang Lim, John Kennedy, Carlos Amat, Oliver Diaz, and Celso Antunes.

Her concerts have taken her to Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, Kennedy Center, Miller Theatre, MoMA, Whitney Museum, San Francisco Performances, Freer Gallery of Art, Morgan Library, (Le) Poisson Rouge, National Gallery of Art, Corcoran Gallery, Spivey Hall, and throughout Europe and the Far East; as well as Festivals worldwide at Lincoln Center Mostly Mozart, BAM’s Next Wave, Spoleto and Portland International Piano Festivals in the USA, Chopin Festival in Austria, Flanders and Ars Musica Festivals in Belgium, Shanghai New Music Festival in China, Divonne Festival in France, Schleswig-Holstein, Potsdam and Husum Piano Rarities Festivals in Germany, Kings Place in London, Millennium Festival in Spain, Festival Archipel in Switzerland, and Winnipeg New Music in Canada.

Jenny’s extensive discography includes critically acclaimed recordings on Steinway & Sons, hänssler CLASSIC, eOne Records, BIS Records, Albany Records, and Sunrise Records. Since 2000, she has over twenty albums to her credit. The New York Times called her disc of Federico Mompou’s Musica Callada “…beautifully recorded…”. Classicstoday praised her 24 Preludes and Fugues Op. 87 by Dmitri Shostakovitch “…hands down the finest version of this massive work” and was voted Best of 2009 by the Washington Post, All-Music Guide raved: “The 11th Finger is a thrill ride for musical adventurers” and “Lin’s playing is nothing less than superhuman”, and Gramophone reported on her CD of Stravinsky’s solo piano music “superbly recorded… another notable achievement from this gifted and imaginative artist.” Other notable recordings have included Liszt Sonata and Schumann Fantasie, music for Piano and Orchestra by Ernest Bloch, Xavier Montsalvatge, Ma Shui-Long Piano Concerto, and ‘Get Happy’, an album of Broadway song arrangements by pianists such as Stephen Hough, Marc-Andre Hamelin, Chistopher O’Riley, and Stephen Prutsman. Two new releases are scheduled for 2015, an album for children and a two-piano disc with Uri Caine.

Jenny is the central figure in Cooking for Jenny by Elemental Films, a musical documentary portraying her journey to the north of Spain and meeting with composer Javier López de Guereña for the preparation of the world premier of his piano concerto ZAHARA. Other media appearances include CBS Sunday Morning, NPR Performance Today, and “Speaking for Myself”, a film about Manhattan as seen through the eyes of eight contemporary artists by filmmaker Bert Shapiro.

Born in Taiwan and raised in Austria, Jenny studied with Noel Flores at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna, with Julian Martin at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, and with Dominique Weber in Geneva. She has also worked with Leon Fleisher, Richard Goode, and Blanca Uribe, and with Dimitri Bashkirov and Andreas Staier at the Fondazione Internazionale per il pianoforte in Como, Italy. She holds a bachelor’s degree in German Literature from The Johns Hopkins University and currently resides in New York City.

This album contains no booklet.