If memory serves me well Philip Glass was the first contemporary composer of 'serious' music I listened to. I bought Satyagraha on vinyl after reading a stellar review in Gramophone and thought myself very cool for doing so. But by the time I brought Akhnaten on CD I'd come to think that Glass wasn't as daring as I first assumed. It all sounded a wee bit too smooth, a wee bit the same.
So the later opera never got quite the same play as it deserved. I realised that when I gave it a spin today. Yes, it sounds smooth, but gorgeously so, and that hypnotic smoothness is entirely appropriate to its dream-like subject matter. This is another of those works that really cries out to be experienced in its theatrical context, and I don't think I'll ever get the chance to see it performed in the opera house. But letting its sound world envelop me is the next best thing, and to be soundly recommended.
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