For real, we've just seen a concert given by Philip Glass at the Theatre Royal in Norwich! It's important to understand the sheer enormity of this. Glass is one of the most well known American composers of the twentieth century and rarely plays outside the States. He played some of the Metamorphosis, Mad Rush, some of his new Etudes, a few bits of film music and Opening from Glassworks. The audience absolutely loved it. He played two encores and received two standing ovations.

I appreciate his status as a key figure in what critics call minimalism, but I have one overriding impression from this concert: Glass just isn't a performer. He has very little sense of his own stage presence. He rushes and fumbles over notes; there were quite a few very obvious mistakes in his performance tonight. Most of his speed changes didn't make musical sense and were clearly just as a result of his pieces being too hard for him to stay in time. (And these pieces really are hard.)

I still thoroughly enjoyed it, though. Now I can add Philip Glass to my list of towering figures of music I've seen in real life. I think the only other person on that list at the moment is Pierre Boulez, but it's a good start.