Herewith a severe condensation of a review in today's Sueddeutsche Zeitung
(Munich) by Reinhard J.  Brembeck of a world premiere perfomance at the
Salzburg Festival of Philip Glass' Symphony No.  5 (Choral):

   "...Aided by other Glass has selects texts deriving from more than
   20 cultures...  evokes and adjures all the myths of all the peoples
   and stews them easy English and thus ...and lets all of human history
   pass in review within one and three-quarters hours at the Grosses
   Festspielhaus in Salzburg...A choral symphony deliberately successive
   to Beethoven...  yet also different from the Ninth because limned by
   the halation of peace rather than of war in Beethoven's time...  [It
   was a perfomance that was] never boring, always entertaining, seldom
   prepossessing and, finally, rewarded with grandiose cheering...

   "Dennis Russell Davies conducted with a dancing, playful joy; the
   Vienna Radio Symphony played with drive; and the soloists--Dawn
   Upshaw, Dagmar Peckova, Michael Schade, Eric Owens, Albert Dohmen--
   all sang with assurance.

   " The festival's boss, Gerard Mortier, apparently chose Glass very
   deliberately. There are only very few such as he that are today
   capable of putting across ingenuously but plausibly such a work, a
   work that pleads for peace...."

Denis Fodor                     Internet:[log in to unmask]