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The Manly Daily - Concert Review Manly Daily, Friday January 19, 1996, Alan Holley. LACKED INVENTION Back in the 1970s, when I was cutting my musical teeth, I was influenced by the works of American minimalism, a movement spearheaded by Steve Reich and Terry Riley and adopted by Philip Glass in his operas and film scores. Glass' first solo performance in Sydney was therefore, of considerable interest. It was with some dismay that I found his work has not developed beyond its first promise. Glass, now in his 59th year, seems content to combine simple classical and romantic harmonies with bouncy baroque rhythms and emotions from the "middle of the road". The result is that his music is easily understood by those who rarely attend concerts and who are not versed in the history and repertoire of classical music. The program was mostly made up of piano arrangements of Glass' theatre works. While this did not create the problem of artistic integrity one might have anticipated, it did accentuate the fact that the piano is not a good medium for his music, which, lacking invention and development, cries out for the colors of different instruments or voices to give a semblance of variety. Glass, surprisingly, failed to come to grips with his own scores though the technical requirements were modest.