The Hours

1	The Poet Acts
2	Morning Passages
3	Something She Has to Do
4	For Your Own Benefit
5	Vanessa and the Changelings
6	I'm Going to Make a Cake
7	An Unwelcome Friend
8	Dead Things
9	The Kiss
10	Why Does Someone Have to Die?
11	Tearing Herself Away
12	Escape!
13	Choosing Life
14	The Hours

Barnes & Noble

Stephen Daldry's film, The Hours, based on the 1998 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Michael Cunningham, tells the stories of three women who are widely separated in time and place: Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman) begins to write her great novel, Mrs. Dalloway, in 1920s England (it becomes a thematic link); Laura Brown (Julianne Moore) is a homemaker in 1940s Los Angeles; and Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Streep) lives in modern-day New York City. With such a non-linear story, the challenge to the film's composer is large, but Philip Glass's solution is ingenious in its simplicity. Rather than accentuating the differences between the tales, Glass offers a score that underpins their commonalities, binding together the three narratives with music that remains essentially similar in style and emotional impact throughout. Glass's palette is modest: a solo piano, harps, and a string orchestra comprise the ensemble. And his vocabulary is similarly restrained: broken chord figurations, slow-moving harmonies, and languid, lyrical melodies combine to form music of unadorned eloquence -- a style entirely familiar to Glass's fans. At times the ensemble textures are beautifully rich, as in "The Poet Acts," with its lush string writing and flowing melody. And even in the more restless moments, like "Escape!," the mood evokes heightened expectancy more than agitation. The title track closes the disc; it begins with slowly pulsing string chords and gradually layers piano and harp while steadily enriching the harmony and rhythm. Hypnotic and atmospheric, it's Philip Glass at his most timeless. EJ Johnson

Entertainment Weekly

[Glass's music] achieves a balance of melancholy and serenity that's wholly appropriate. [B] Scott Paulin

Gramophone

I predict a great success for this album of music -- such a feeling of fragile beauty, which never lapses into mere sentimentality, is a rare achievement. Ivan Moody