Vanessa Wagner

Philip Glass‘s Etudes exist as emotional cartographies, each one mapping territories of consciousness through the patient architecture of repetition. This is a collection of 20 solo piano pieces composed between 1991 and 2012, which Glass wrote to improve his own technique and explore new ideas, with a focus on rhythmic, harmonic, and expressive landscapes. If you haven’t heard them before, now is your chance! And what better performer to execute them with the right balance of emotion and precision than Vanessa Wagner, whom I have previously celebrated and profiled on these pages for her solo compositions and collaborative projects [with Murcof]. “Etude No. 2,” with its deceptively simple surface, reveals the essential Glass paradox: how minimalist structures can generate maximal emotional resonance. Wagner’s piano playing illuminates this tension, her hands becoming conduits for music that demands, as she describes it, “the courage to surrender oneself entirely to repetition, allowing the mind to drift freely.” Through delicate yet exact execution, we hear not only her technical mastery of the instrument and the light, repetitive fluttering of the keys, but also a transformation of this repetition into meditation, where the structure of the piece dissolves into a passionate and emotive state. Besides the music, I’m also sharing with you a video directed by French visual artist Laurent Pernot specifically for this piece, featuring imagery that captures the flickering memories as they slowly dissolve into the vapour of the void. Pernot has previously collaborated with Wagner on Study of the Invisible, Mirrored, as well as the singles Motion and Inverness, exploring the themes of time, memory, and impermanence.