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===New Directions===
Since the late 1980s Glass also has written more and more for solo [[piano]], starting with a cycle of Five Pieces for a theatrical adaptation of [[Franz Kafka]]'s [[The Metamorphosis]] (1988), and continuing with his first volume of [[Etudes]] for Piano (1994-1995). The first six Etudes were originally comissioned by the conductor and pianist Dennis Russel Davies, but the complete first set is now often performed by Glass ("who is no piano virtuoso" - John Rockwell) himself. The critic [[John Rockwell]] dismissed ''Metamorphosis'' as "simplistic" (as well as all other works by Glass since Akhnaten), but praised the Etudes as "powerful", comparing them to [[Bartok]]'s ouevre for piano. Part of the Etudes are in the idiom of pieces from the same time, of the Opera Triptych after Cocteau, the Third Symphony or the Saxophone Quartet Concerto (No.1, No.5 and No.8), whereas others are almost written in retrospect to Glass' work from the 70s (No.10). The same trend of juxtapositioning the two idioms also surfaces to some extend in an uneven score for [[Godfrey Reggio]]'s ''[[Naqoyqatsi]]'' ([[2002]]), in the Chamber Opera ''The Sound of a Voice'' (2003), to a lesser extend in the series of Concertos since 2000 (with mixed results), and in three symphonies which are centered on the interplay of either vocalist or chorus and orchestra. Two symphonies written in a very similar idiom - Symphony No.5 (1999) and Symphony No.7 (2004), are based on religious or meditative themes, whereas Glass' operatic Symphony No.6 ''[[Plutonian Ode]]'' (2001) started as a collaboration with the poet [[Allen Ginsberg]] (for reciter and piano), based on his poem by the same title. In this piece Glass explored new, more complicated and dissonant textures in the first and second movement, only to return in the third movement to a sort of additive process with ravishing and surprisingly fresh results.
===Recent works: ''Waiting for the Barbarians'' and the Symphony No.8===
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