Philip Glass Ensemble, Michael Reisman, Glass: Einstein On The Beach

One of the true revolutionary moments in music history, the 1976 debut of Einstein sent shock waves through the worlds of classical music, and eventually rock music, and forced a complete re-thinking of what the word "opera" might mean. EOTB consisted of a dreamlike sequence of tableaux by avant-garde director Robert Wilson, often accompanied by a headlong rush of winds, keyboards and vocals from the Philip Glass Ensemble. The tension between the slow movements on stage and the energy of the music made the full experience something akin to a trance state, or a hallucination. The recording, which of course is the music only, can still hint at the overall experience because of two unusual features: one is the series of short connecting musical joints, the so-called "Knee Plays," between the larger Acts. With the singers using do-re-mi syllables and counting the rhythms of the music, the "Knee Plays" might just be the most transparent pieces of music ever written. The other feature is a series of texts, again almost hallucinatory in nature, and many written by an autistic young man who was living at the time with Robert Wilson, which may not make "sense" but which portrays obsession just as effectively as Glass's landmark score.

While EOTB is almost about not having a story, the piece does hold together, and in fact concludes with a simple and touching story set to the fifth and final Knee Play. Fans of the original and long-out-of-print recording on the Tomato label will perhaps miss the slightly abridged version, but the full Knee Play V is still a startlingly touching and transformative moment in contemporary music. Other excerpts that have occasionally been played on their own include "Train" and "Dance (Field With Spaceship)." These two and some of the Knee Plays would make a fine introduction to this landmark work.