For die-hard Glass fans, this recording is the longer (and cheaper) of the two available. If you enjoy his Music in Twelve Parts and other earlier works, this opera is a real treat. Since Einstein is such a monumental piece in the Glass library, it's a must buy. But if you're looking for something less hardcore, try Songs from the Trilogy. I gave five stars because when compared to other music, it's still awe-inspiring, but when compared to other Philip Glass music, especially the other two operas, it rates three stars.
As for the music itself, it's wonderful, batty, utterly distinctive and very different to Glass's later, more conservative, work. The opening segment uses the most epic series of three repeated notes imaginable, and it veers from tunefulness, to complete mania (a length section in which a violinist dementedly runs through scales, hammering out the notes faster and fast, stands out), and beyond - for one astonishing sequence, a chorus chants numbers at impossible speed, a capella. The performers are folded into mechanical shapes and you'll wonder how human beings could possibly produce so much music, so quickly, for so long. It waxes and wanes, fading up to a melancholic conclusion in which two people sit on a park bench and talk.
It doesn't really 'mean' any one thing, any more than a spanner or a cockroach 'means' something, and it's astonishing.
