Truth In Our Time - Glass: Symphony No.13, Canada's National Arts Centre Orchestra, CD

The album is a musical and poetic rumination on the concept of truth. Beginning with an exercise in perception with Nicole Lizée's short "Zeiss After Dark" which "evokes the cinematographic effect of the Zeiss lens, used to film intimate scenes lit only by candles." This is followed by artist Yao's poem "Strange Absurdities," a piece which challenges the listener to cultivate our common humanity. Humanity is at the core as the album continues with Shostakovich's Symphony No.9 from 1945. Shostakovich, whose very humanity was challenged by the oppressive authorities of his time, composed his Ninth Symphony in the final year of World War II. In the same year, on the other side of the world - a composer who had fled the Europe because of the war, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, composed his Violin Concerto for Jascha Heifetz. The concept of truth, what was true for Shostakovich or Korngold, seems to be an issue of personal artistic integrity. The same is true with this world premiere recording of Philip Glass's Symphony No.13. Commissioned to honor the memory of journalist Peter Jennings, in a period of strife worldwide for journalist, Glass himself pushed back on the idea of music having the ability to express any definite ideas about truth. Glass's Thirteenth Symphony was composed in the period of 2020-22, largely during the period of lockdown according to what was happening with the worldwide pandemic. After a series of large-scale symphonic works, Glass's new symphony is one of his shortest at only 22 minutes and belies a calmness and reflection, in all three of it's movements.