Chicago Ravina review of Book of Longing

[dick]

from the chicago sun times

Cohen plays poetic muse, Glass sets him to music
REVIEW | 'Longing' glances back at youth, makes peace with age

June 15, 2007
BY HEDY WEISS Theater Critic

Franz Schubert, Robert Schuman and Gustav Mahler did it. So did the Who, the Beach Boys and Lennon and McCartney. They all wrote song cycles using either their own or others' poetry. So why should composer Philip Glass and fabled Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen -- who appears to be Glass' poetic muse -- be any different?
In fact, they are not. And with "Book of Longing" -- which had its Chicago premiere Tuesday and Wednesday at the Ravinia Festival's Martin Theatre -- the two artists prove to be masters of the form.

Glass, now 70 , is the long-reigning emperor of modern classical music. Cohen, 72, has spent his career melding pop, folk and Euro-cabaret to his existential-meets-erotic confessional style. Here they have created a work of feverish passion and wily humor that has summoned the very best in each other.

Sexually charged, memory-drenched and riding high on a sense of mortality, the 22 poems of the libretto for "Book of Longing" are Cohen's elaborate variation on Dylan Thomas' proclamation "do not go gentle into that good night" about death. While conjuring the heat of erotic bliss and creative fire of his prime, Cohen comes to a roaringly uneasy peace with his waning years -- at once yearning to recapture time past and finding a strange pleasure in his wistful remembrance of bygone pleasures. His appetites remain, at least in his dreams, but have been transformed. And he is enjoying the metaphysics of it all, with a Jewish uproar-meets-Buddhist tranquillity uniting poet and composer.

Cohen's writing is full of turbulence, ambivalence and brash self-revelation. It has added punch, thanks to projections of his stunning drawings done in a Japanese woodblock style with hints of Picasso's late, haunted-looking self-portraits. All this clearly has inspired some of Glass' most overtly sensual, richly colored, deeply theatrical music in a score with echoes of Schubert, Kurt Weill and Cohen.

Although Cohen is heard only on tape, reciting a few of his shorter, more acerbic poems, Glass was at the keyboard along with conductor Michael Riesman and four singers (Tara Hugo as the woman of experience, Dominique Plaisant as the more pliant one, and Will Erat and Daniel Keeling as the males in the equation). The highly individualistic musicians included the eloquent Tim Fain (violin) and Wendy Sutter (cello), Eleonore Oppenheim (double bass, who had a remarkable solo), Kate St. John, Andrew Sterman and Mick Rossi.

An audacious work with a massive magnetic pull.

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The Tribune

Glass can be murky in 'Book of Longing'

By Michael Cameron
Special to the Tribune
Published June 15, 2007


The perils of composer Phillip Glass' setting poet/songwriter Leonard Cohen's "Book of Longing" to music were clear in Poem 19 of the 22 works presented Tuesday at Ravinia after a Toronto world premiere a week ago.

The poem is "You Came to Me This Morning," the second part of which is also the lyric of the Cohen standard "A Thousand Kisses Deep." Glass' extension triples the length of the original song to more than a quarter hour. The single-line refrain morphs from catchy to tiresome, and the rhymed couplets (46 in all) trade contained pithiness for verbosity.


Glass cynics might anticipate that 90-plus minutes of his music would test audience patience, but in this work, the fault is less the music itself than the composer's apparent obsession with his subject.

When the songs and poetry of Cohen resonate, they do so on an intimate level, spatially and temporally. Listeners sampled this effect during six brief poems that came via Cohen's taped voice, unadorned, in a near-whispered basso that bares some kinship to Ken Nordine of "Word Jazz" fame.

Besides Cohen's spoken voice, there were other small pleasures tucked away. Several of the instrumentalists briefly grabbed the spotlight for well-crafted solo interludes, and Cohen's modest projected sketches were mildly diverting.

Glass, turning 70 this year, has assembled a stellar roster of four singers and eight instrumentalists, with Glass himself on one of two electronic keyboards. Will Erat, Tara Hugo, Daniel Keeling and Dominique Plaisant were the superb vocalists, delivering the text in a style closer to cabaret/Broadway musical than opera or art song.

The overall performance seems to squeeze Glass marginally out of his comfort zone -- no small feat -- although his trademark arpeggios are rarely absent. ---------- mailto:ctc-tempo@tribune.com