Orange Mountain Music presents a new studio recording of Philip Glass's Fifth Symphony performed by Trinity Wall Street, Novus NY, Trinity Youth Chorus, and a remarkable group of soloists in a new recording celebrating the 20th anniversary of the piece which premiered on 28 August 1999 at the Salzburg Festival as part of the celebrations around the Millennium.At 100 minutes long, Glass's Fifth Symphony is his magnum symphonic opus. The piece reflects a journey of human experiences through texts of the world's various "Wisdom Traditions" (religions). Because if its size, the piece is rarely performed. Conductor Julian Wachner played Glass's Symphony at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC in November 2016 and immediately resolved to make a new recording with the full resources of Trinity Wall Street in New York including NOVUS NY, Trinity Choir, Trinity Children’s Choir, Downtown Voices and soloists Heather Buck, Katherine Pracht, Vale Rideout, Stephen Salters, and David Cushing. 'Symphony No. 5 was commissioned by the Salzburg Festival in Salzburg, Austria as a celebration of the second millennium, in the year 2000. Its premiere took place on April 28, 1999. It was my intention to provoke a flow of attention for the listener which would be based on the world's Wisdom Traditions - their commonalities, differences, and eccentricities. Now two decades after its premiere, this new recording by Trinity Wall Street and all the collected forces of orchestra, choirs and singers under Julian Wachner, make these commonalities, differences, and eccentricities appear even more pronounced than was initially imagined' – Philip Glass, 2019.
The new recording features a 2 CD set of a new studio recording of the Glass work, but also a DVD concert video of the live performance if the piece in Trinity Church in New York City, and an extended interview with Julian Wachner and Philip Glass.
