Internationally renowned French pianist Vanessa Wagner has been exploring the repertoire of minimalist composers for over a decade. After dedicating four albums on InFiné to these composers and spending hundreds of hours performing their works, she felt compelled to record in its entirety one of the most essential monuments of 20th-century music: Philip Glass’s Twenty Etudes for Piano.
To introduce this complete recording, she has chosen Etude No. 17, which she performed just days ago in New York, captured on film by Derrick Belcham, who had previously filmed a Take-Away show for La Blogothèque with Philip Glass a decade ago. “Vanessa Wagner joined me in New York City on a rare snowy day to wander the city where Philip Glass composed the 17th Etude, take a train across the river to Brooklyn, and play that beautiful piece on a piano referencing Mr. Glass’s modest beginnings in the late 1960s in the East Village.” he recounts.