For the Record, Op. 337: Anne Akiko Meyers 'Philip Glass Violin Concerto'

June 13, 2025, 1:07 PM · Welcome to "For the Record," Violinist.com's weekly roundup of new releases of recordings by violinists, violists, cellists and other classical musicians. We hope it helps you keep track of your favorite artists, as well as find some new ones to add to your listening! Click on the highlighted links to obtain each album or learn more about the artists.

Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers. Photo by Lindsay Childs.

Philip Glass Violin Concerto
Anne Akiko Meyers, violin
Aubree Oliverson, violin
Emmanuel Ceysson, harp
Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel conducting

Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers' latest album features the music of one of the last century's most innovative and influential composers, Philip Glass: his Violin Concerto No. 1 (at Walt Disney Concert Hall, with Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic); the world-premiere recording of "New Chaconne" (which Glass composed for Meyers and she performed with harpist Emmanuel Ceysson); and "Echorus" (performed by Meyers with violinist Aubree Oliverson and the Colburn School's Academy Virtuosi).
Glass wrote his 1987 violin concerto for his father, Ben Glass, who tragically had died in a car accident more than 10 years before, in 1974. "He loved all the great violin concertos, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, all of them," Glass said in 2024 of his father. "So I aspired to write a piece he would have liked." Glass had grown up working in his father's record store in Baltimore, and in the intervening years he had made his reputation as a composer of music with minimal, repetitive structures. When, at age 50, he received a commission from the American Composers Orchestra to write a violin concerto, it allowed him to return to tradition.

"Even though Ben Glass had passed away 13 years prior, he was very much in Philip’s mind," Meyers said. She noticed that "there are actually three notes inside the score, D-A-D," which occur after the introduction in the first movement: the percussion sets the stage for a big entrance for the violin soloist, who plays the notes D-A-D.
"Over these decades, many performances and many recordings, no one has ever mentioned that to me," Glass said. "I don’t know how I could have made it any more obvious."
Much like the standard violin concertos, Glass's concerto is cast in three movements, fast-slow-fast. It has a heroic role for the soloist, and a beautiful chaconne for the slow movement.
Dudamel said that could feel the history of the piece while recording it. "The music of Philip Glass is full of beauty, in a sense of a journey," Dudamel said. "I always listen to his music and conduct it as if you're on a trip — always moving forward...like you can touch the future."

When Glass and Meyers met in 2023 at the composer’s home in New York, the possibility to compose something new for her came up. With the idea of new friends and old forms, Glass set out to write a chaconne. Premiered in 2024, his "New Chaconne" meditates on a new friendship and the simple joy of making music. Emmanuel Ceysson, the principal harpist of the L.A. Philharmonic, accompanies Meyers on harp.
Glass’s "Echorus" (1994-95), for two violins and string orchestra is played here by Meyers and the violinist Aubree Oliverson with the Academy Virtuosi from the Colburn School in Los Angeles, where Meyers once studied. When Meyers was the artistic director of the 2024 Laguna Music Festival, she performed "Echorus" with Oliverson and the Academy Virtuosi, and "New Chaconne" with Ceysson.
BELOW: Trailer for the album, with musical excerpts and commentary by Anne Akiko Meyers and Gustavo Dudamel.

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For the Record, Op. 337: Anne Akiko Meyers 'Philip Glass Violin Concerto'

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