THE STATESMAN, CALCUTTA:
Music from a pianist who feels every note. Peter Seivewright does not pore over music notations but over every key stroke he makes. The double-CD is one of the finest to appear in recent times. The booklet accompanying the CD also deserves mention. The life of Louis Glass has been captured beautifully in a few words. The best piece on the album is Fantasistykker. Piano music is good company on a quiet evening.
(unnamed reviewer, 1 Nov. 2006)

CLASSICALNET:
It is a real tragedy that from the end of the Second World War until the beginning of the 1990's, Danish romantic music was practically ignored altogether both in Denmark itself and elsewhere, as history testifies to a glorious romantic repertoire second only to Germany. The last decade has seen a stirring revival of interest in Danish romanticism, and this double-CD set dedicated to the piano works of Louis Glass is more than welcome. An exact contemporary of Carl Nielsen, but not as influential, Glass composed a considerable number of important works, among which are six rambling symphonies and other orchestral pieces. But it is in the piano and chamber fields that one finds his finest contributions to the canon of European music, and this compilation is indeed a wonderful advert to Glass's precociousness. The mainstays of this album are without doubt the two Sonatas Op. 6 and 25, two huge works of Beethovenian proportions full of dramatic strokes and highly original passages that tax the soloist to the limits.

The 'Fantasi' Op. 35 was Glass' most popular work in his lifetime, while the Lyrical Bagatelles, Op. 26, the Fantasy Pieces Op. 4 and the 3 Piano Pieces Op. 66 highlight the composer's excitable palette for colourful inventiveness.

Peter Seivewright's interpretations are fastidiously detailed, and despite the work's considerable demands, he plays with a winning ease and fluency that serve Glass's cause marvellously well. A fascinating opportunity to discover one of Denmark's most talented musical sons.
Gerald Fenech

RECORDS INTERNATIONAL:
The three sets of 15 short pieces are an addition to the CD catalogue - romantic character pieces in the vein of Schumann (the “Fantasy Pieces”) and in Glass’ own mature style. The main story is the performance of the two sonatas and the Fantasy; many collectors will have the 1992 Dacapo release with pianist Nina Gade. Compare the timings in the order listed above, Gade first: 27:29 and 37:36, 29:24 and 41:46, 14:46 and 21:14. Astounding, no? Why? Gade plays them like they’re Schumann or Mendelssohn and Seivewright like they’re late Beethoven (or Celibidache conducting Bruckner). Both approaches really work too! The Dacapo is out of print but true Glass collectors will certainly want both anyway.
Un-named reviewer

OXFORD TODAY:
Peter Seivewright has recorded the piano music of a truly international genius, Denmark’s Carl Nielsen, for Naxos. Now he evangelises for Nielsen’s unknown contemporary Louis Glass (1864-1936, but a conservative Romantic),on Divine Art 21205. The double CD includes two piano sonatas plainly using the language of late Beethoven, but without a trace of Beethoven’s speed or originality of thought, of his transcendence. But then Seivewright suggests a parallel with Bruckner, a massive blind spot for me, so others might have more patience with Glass. There’s a big Fantasi too (Liszt/Franck with an untenably Wagnerian apotheosis), but for me the smaller pieces were more interesting – a Grieg-style Pastorale with drone bass, a strikingly Russian bagatelle, and a skittering fantasy which intriguingly fragments into silence. Fine playing.
Graham Topping

KLASSIK.COM:
In this double CD, replete with golden piano pieces of late Danish romanticism, the English pianist Peter Seivewright, almost unknown in this country, provides testament to his productive curiosity in opening up new parts of the repertoire. This production, published by Divine Art, shows that the exercise is worthwhile.

The effort required to delve into the imponderables of late Danish romanticism is highly commendable. As the accompanying text shows (for all that it sometimes overdoes its praise of Danish composers) Seivewright has immersed himself in the material. Anyone who can write about not just Carl Nielsen, but also about Emil Hartmann, Christian Frederik Emil Horneman, Otto Malling, Victor Bendix, Peter Emilius Lange-Müller and August Enna, must really know about the Danish music of the time (which in turn means having studied the scores and some Danish compendia, since recordings of the works of these composers are, unfortunately, extremely rare).

Louis Glass (1864-1936) whose piano music Peter Seivewright introduces on both discs, also formed part of this radiant musical life in Copenhagen between 1890 and about 1930. Raised in a good middle-class household, he continued the private piano school founded by his father, and devoted himself to composition. His opus includes six large-scale symphonies, a good deal of chamber music, and a significant body of piano music – the pieces on this recording do not even represent half of Louis Glass’s total piano output. Seivewright has selected two large scale piano sonatas (each about 40 minutes long), together with the “Fantasie” op.35 and some small piano pieces.

Seivewright begins with a weighty piece, the A Major Sonata op. 25 of 1898. With massive chords Glass forges a plastic and sharply contoured theme. In the development section of the second theme he tricks the listener – a chromatically interspersed figure recalls the fugue theme from Brahms’ op. 8 (the connecting section in the exposition of the main movement in the first version). But in Glass’s work the fugal part does not appear. Instead the accompaniment is overarched with tender melodic points, before chordal progression and melodic relationships characterise the main theme and the songlike secondary theme too. Glass demonstrates here not only good-quality compositional craft, he also shows himself to be an extremely profound creator both in musical terms and in relation to the piano.

With loving attention to detail and a majestic touch, Peter Seivewright understands just how to bring out the varied emotions of this music. The slow movement in particular comes across very expressively, linking closely to the principal theme of the main movement where Seivewright creates very vigorous melodic sweeps. The pianistic brilliance demanded by Fantasi op 35 is something which Sievewright masters effortlessly. He manages to hold the 20 minute piece together convincingly, clearly bringing out the striking creation of themes and their reiterations, without interrupting the tonal flow.

The earlier E Major piano sonata op 6 (1892) shows Glass as a composer clearly oriented to classical forms (and dimensions), for whom Beethoven’s late piano sonatas served as a foundation, albeit interwoven with extended harmonic models.

Peter Seivewright presents short pieces from various cycles, each marked with its own tone. From the cheerful little sugar pieces from the Fantasistykker [Fantasy Pieces] op 4 to the later Klavierstykker [Piano Pieces] op 66, a whole range of different emotions are evoked, from a lively Ecossaise to an almost religious Pastorale in the Lyriske Bagatelle [Lyrical Bagatelle] op 26. Peter Seivewright demonstrates here a technical mastery of the piano, and it is clearly audible that his heart is touched by the music. He plays with a lot of feeling for the colours and tones, but for the compositional form too. This splendid recording demonstrates that Louis Glass belongs to that class of composers who should have earned a firm place in the repertoire.

Unfortunately the sound quality of the recording is less impressive than the interpretation. In places the piano comes through too stark, at times somewhat unbalanced and jangly. But this can be tolerated for such an interesting musical offering.
Tobias Pfleger

GLASGOW HERALD:
Louis Glass was a fairly prolific late Romantic Danish composer who died in 1936. RSAMD pianist Peter Seivewright, who believes Glass is at least of the stature of Carl Nielsen, has recorded this double CD of Glass’s music which includes two large-scale sonatas, an epic fantasy and collections of smaller pieces. Of the two sonatas, the A flat major is a piece of great nobility, well structured and highly integrated thematically. It wears its Romanticism coolly. But Glass’s major strength lies in the exquisite, often wistful and charming small lyric pieces. Seivewright’s performing style, which is structuralist, sometimes at the expense of fluidity, is idiosyncratic and a matter of taste.
Michael Tumelty

MUSICWEB:
It’s difficult to know what to make of Louis Glass. He’s one of those composers who rather flatter to deceive, who begin with a flourish and tend to end in prolixity. Or that’s the impression one often gets. Peter Seivewright’s mission naturally is to prove the virtues in Glass’s Beethovenian-inspired melodrama and to convey it with articulacy and proper scale. I can’t fault his proselytising but I still have problems with Glass.

It’s interesting that Seivewright prefers the A flat major sonata. One can see why. It’s a bigger, bolder work than the more youthful E major, which Seivewright tends rather to slight. But I have a sneaking admiration for the Op.6. The later A flat major sonata opens with bullish Beethovenian rhetoric, ambles into romantic pastures - it was published in 1898 – and then slows right down. Dynamics here are extreme, themes return with rather repetitious regularity. My own instinct was that the music should be taken much faster but Seivewright is a sagacious guide and one should trust his judgement. Seivewright’s booklet digression on the Chromatic Fourth in the second movement would infuriate the Editor but quite interested me, though like many an eminent High Court judge I’ve never heard Miss You Like Crazy by Natalie Cole. Those moments in the second movement that owe their genesis anywhere perhaps owe most to Mussorgsky, a composer Seivewright doesn’t mention - though he does mention Bach, Purcell, Wagner and the song sung by Miss Cole. I’m afraid that hereafter Glass’s inspiration runs pretty empty. The scherzo, despite the pianist’s best protestations, is a trudge and the finale, whilst it revisits earlier material goes nowhere. I can’t sympathetise with the idea that the scherzo boasts a "sublime four-part counterpoint" – it might be lucid to play but it’s prolix to hear.

The earlier sonata attempts slightly less and achieves slightly more, at least in my book. Again there are touches of Beethovenian power but also leavenings of Grieg. It’s a more coherent statement, though only slightly shorter, than the Op.25 sonata though one would have to admit that it’s very much more conventional in tone. I greatly took to the central panel of the scherzo with its rather beautiful melodic impress, surrounded as it is by more extrovert writing. The finale is again rather paragraphal and lacking in cumulative direction. But as a sonata I found it the more engaging.

The Fantasi was apparently Glass’s most popular work during his lifetime. It does have grandeur and it does have a quasi-improvisatory spirit that command attention. But it’s simply too long and for stretches one loses interest. The smaller pieces show us the miniaturist. They consist of character studies, little elfin dances or romances, small moments of concise nobility. The Lyrical Bagatelles whiz by but the Op.66 Piano Pieces are cut from a rather deeper cloth. There’s even a rather assertive Ecossaise. The Op.4 set is pure Schumann - with a twist of Bach for the fifth, In The Rain. They’re not referred to in the booklet notes so far as I can see.

I’m not in a position to compare this two disc set with Nina Gade’s recital on DCCD9306 – she plays the sonatas and the Fantasi. But Peter Seivewright is a powerful and obviously convinced exponent who once again shows his mettle here. For me it’s a losing cause but for others it may well prove, given the sympathetic recordings, a more enjoyable introduction to Glass’s piano oeuvre.
Jonathan Woolf