The Hours

The brooding harmonies of Philip Glass, with their trademark repetitive patterns and swirling arpeggios, make his style a near-perfect fit for Stephen Daldry’s The Hours, adapted from Michael Cunningham’s novel. A heart-wrenching psychological study of three women living in different places at different times in history—author Virginia Woolf is writing Mrs Dalloway; a housewife in 1950s suburban America is reading it; and a modern-day editor is living it, in a way—the acclaimed 2002 film gracefully steers from one period to the other, and so does the soundtrack, underscoring the emotional resonance of the performances from the trio and the film's carefully attuned editing. Instead of employing a different style for each period, Glass matches the static timelessness of the plot, meditating on the choices of each heroine and amplifying the turmoil she is experiencing. The Academy Award–nominated soundtrack is scored for a melancholic piano, accompanied by softly rocking silken strings. Michael Riesman and the Lyric Quartet, under conductor Nick Ingman, appear in the original recording, which also harks back to older Glass pieces, most notably the moody Metamorphosis Two.