When in the early ’90s the composer and classically trained pianist Philip Glass set about composing his Etudes, he wanted to write music that he could perform in his solo piano concerts, and that would also improve his playing technique. A decade later, he embarked on a second set of 10, taking a deeper dive into an exploration of rhythm and harmony that would produce pieces beyond his technical capabilities. The second set is much harder to play, then, but for a fully-fledged virtuoso such as Vanessa Wagner this cycle of studies presents an altogether different kind of challenge. “It is not a musical demonstration of virtuosity—it’s not like playing the studies of Chopin or Liszt,” she tells Apple Music Classical. “Rather, you have to be able to build tension, create something cinematographic and colorful in a musical way.” Listen to Glass’ Etudes and you may be reminded of his film soundtracks. In Etude No. 8, for example, there are hints of the haunting solo piano in the 1998 film The Truman Show, and in Etude No. 20 of Godfrey Reggio’s trance-like documentary Visitors, composed in its wake. But perhaps what makes Glass’ Etudes seem cinematic is the way in which it evokes mood, using repetition in a way that is meditative yet immersive, unobtrusive yet evocative. With the trademark repeated arpeggios of the opening Etude No. 1, we are drawn into a sense of dark mystery that gives way to melody and moments of light. “For me, the Etudes have to be played like Schubert because as in Schubert’s music, you have nostalgia, melancholia, lyricism, and impish humour,” Wagner says. “You also have a sense of dance, or something rhythmical and a lot of tenderness. You can’t quite call it Romantic but it's very emotional; it's always alive and colorful, as in impressionist music.” As well as Schubert you’ll hear hints of Debussy’s impressionism in the watercolor textures of Etude No. 2. But whereas Debussy’s Etudes, and the light and shade of Schubert’s piano works, demand a freedom of expression from their performer, Glass’ music is more about constraint, precision, and balance. “You need great control of the keyboard, as well as immense concentration,” says Wagner “You just have to let people come into this magical world. The difficulty is you have to be a perfect pianist to do that, to play it perfectly. Because one wrong note, one mistimed accent is heard immediately. It’s like Bach—you have to be almost perfect when you play. Everything has to be at the right, perfect pace.” Wagner has performed some of the Etudes individually over the years; “but when you hear the whole cycle, it takes on a very different meaning,” she says. “It’s like a big arch between the first Etude and the last one.” Within that arch, the pieces are all in some way connected: the meditative No. 5 offers the calm before the storms of No. 6; the fresh injection of lyricism and grandeur in No. 8 looks forward to No. 16, a shared motif linking the two works; No. 11 opens the second book with a new kind of expressivity, that builds to the monumental No. 15, the climax of Book 2; while the unassuming No. 19 paves the way for the finale. “No. 20 is a condensation of what you heard previously: it’s very intense. It ends the cycle but it’s completely different to the others,” Wagner says. “It opens up a new world.”