Bruce Brubaker, Time Curve: Music for Piano by Philip Glass and William Duckworth

Pianist Bruce Brubaker has earned a well-deserved reputation for his performances of contemporary works, especially those in a minimalist/post-minimalist vein. This collection pairs keyboard works by founding minimalist composer Philip Glass (although they're later pieces in his more developed style) with some of the Time-Curve Preludes by William Duckworth. Duckworth has been called the first post-minimalist composer, and this set of preludes, dating from 1979, is a landmark in contemporary piano music. The original performance by Neely Bruce is definitely worth checking out as well, but Brubaker's reading of the first 12 of the 24 etudes will give you a good idea of the scope and ingenuity of these works. Prelude #1 is a finely-wrought, lyrical rush of melody — you might not associate it with the fleet-fingered banjo breakdowns of Duckworth's southern youth, but that is its inspiration. The pensive third prelude, the angular 10th, and the melancholy sixth prelude — perhaps the one closest in tone to the minimalism of Glass and Reich earlier that decade — show the diversity of moods within the piece; but somehow they all seem to fit together. There's a reason for that: the Time Curve Preludes are basically a series of variations on a hidden theme, as each prelude is built around pedal tones and drones that, over the course of a 24-part work, derive from the medieval "Dies Irae" chant.

Philip Glass's Etudes are also a diverse lot, but that's because most of them were composed as separate pieces. The most lyrical of them is etude #2, with its aching bass line; #6 is Glass at his motoric best; #4 has an almost Romantic cast (which returns in several of the later etudes — like the Duckworth preludes, this is only the first part of a larger set). Listeners who have heard Glass himself play these pieces over the years will note that Brubaker often uses slower tempi, which in this case produces a series of performances of great clarity.