Can there be too much of a good thing? This question flitted through my mind as pianist Conor Hanick started to play Etude No. 16 in the cycle of The Complete Piano Etudes of Philip Glass performed at Saturday’s La Jolla SummerFest concert. SummerFest Music Director Inon Barnatan and eight other pianists brilliantly guided The Conrad audience through this minimalist catalogue of 20 daunting etudes composed by Philip Glass in the 1990s.
When Hanick seated himself at the formidable Steinway, the audience had already spent two and one-half hours immersed in what SummerFest cleverly titled The Glass Menagerie, an exhilarating, challenging musical journey.
Each pianist played two of the etudes, although one of the original cadre of ten performers dropped out and Barnatan valiantly stepped in—so he offered four of the etudes, two at the beginning and two more at the program’s close. The evening’s choreography proved award worthy: ten piano benches—each one carefully calibrated to the height of each pianist—were arranged in order in a wide semi-circle behind the concert grand, and each bench was bathed in its own spotlight. When a performer finished their set of etudes, two stagehands appeared and exchanged with appropriate solemnity the current bench with the bench for the next player.
Describing all 20 etudes in this review is out of the question, but allow me to describe enough to give a sense of the stylistic breath of these works written in Glass’s sophisticated minimalist idiom. Barnatan’s flashy account of Etude No. 1 with its majestic roulades and roiling themes in athletic contrary motion set a high technical standard for the series. His Etude No. 2 offered welcome contrast, a Chopinesque meditation with a floating texture that Erik Satie surely would have recognized. Melonie Grinnell treated Etude No. 7 as a rhapsodic ballade, favoring the bold opening left-hand theme with her luxurious touch, and allowing her deft rubato and suave phrasing to elegantly shape the etude.
Glass’s preferred mode is the densely structured agitated arpeggio, and his dashing moto perpetuo Etude No. 6 in Steven Osborne’s hands resounded with powerful Lisztian flourish. In Etude No. 10, Matthew Aucoin accentuated its jazzy descending rhythmic motifs and cleanly articulated the striking dancelike filigree in right-hand passages at the top of the keyboard.
Juho Pohjonen suggested the intimate communication of a suave cabaret pianist in the more lyrical Etude No. 14, built on a gentle chaconne in the left hand. Etude No. 15 opened with the inviting warmth of a Brahms Intermezzo, and David Kaplan deftly modulated its unexpected about face that climaxed with a bravura Lisztian final cadence.
Conor Hanick’s introspective, lyrical opening theme in Etude No. 17 blossomed into the rousing, full-bodied heart of this heady etude that closed with a surprisingly luminous coda. Throughout Glass’s piano Etudes, predictability was not a dependable virtue.
For a concert marked by a surfeit of fortissimo grandeur, Etude No. 20—the final installment—provided an almost mystical benediction. Barnatan played it with the restraint of a cloudy Debussy prelude filled with discrete melodies and bell-like roulades.
In addition to the pianists I have already mentioned in this review, Ying Li and Timo Andres were the other members of this elite team performing the 20 Glass Etudes. This musical journey took but a few minutes under three hours, but the rapt engagement of the La Jolla SummerFest audience surely must have encouraged Barnatan’s impressive cadre of virtuoso pianists.
This concert was presented by the La Jolla Music Society on July 26, 2025, at La Jolla’s Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center in downtown La Jolla.