Triadic Memories

Pianist Basilova has lived an international life, but is always drawn to the music of Russian composers and those they influenced.

Morton Feldman - Triadic Memories - Aki Takahashi (1989) {ALM Records Japan ALCD-33 rec 1983}
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© 1989 ALM Records / Kojima Recordings Japan | ALCD-33
Classical / Modern Classical / Avant-Garde / Minimalism / Solo Piano

Avant-garde music professor Morton Feldman casts the listener into a black web of trigonometry in this Japanese import, recorded in 1981. Heavily influenced by John Cage and abstract-expressionist painter Philip Guston, the composer typically spreads out a blanket of notes in a pointillistic style, giving the performer the additional challenge – or privilege – of putting their self-expression on the line. It's said that Shakespeare sinks or swims depending on the skill of the actor, and pianist Aki Takahashi is just such a performer.

Few atonal piano compositions are so amenable to generate new meaningful, extremely sombre soundscapes as ‘ Triadic Memories’, according to different modalities of execution some would call rendition. This one execution, excruciatingly slow, generates aural hallucinations in the guise of rational insights. Beware of the illusion of order, this Feldman classic piece proves that that is way more harmful, as in pathetically alienating, than the illusion of depth..

Triadic Memories is one of Morton Feldman's most popular and frequently performed works for piano. Here, more than is usual in his music, Feldman uses the repetition of patterns and gestures. The repetitions are rarely exact – they are characterized by very subtle rhythmic variations – but almost every gesture, whether large or small, is repeated a few or many times. The repeated figures, while all being quiet and relatively simple and brief, vary in their length, structure, and texture. The unpredictability of the number of repetitions, the asymmetry of the repeated figures, the avoidance of a regular pulse, and the subtlety with which Feldman alters the repetitions keep the music continually intriguing for the attentive listener.

The Morton Feldman Piano box set is the most extensive survey of Feldman’ s piano music to date. Released exactly 20 years after John Tilbury’ s long unavailable 4-CD set, the new box includes several pieces which weren’ t included there, and has three works which have never been released on disc before. Philip Thomas has been playing Feldman’ s music for 25 years and is one of the foremost interpreters of his work with an extraordinary gentle touch. He and John Tilbury combined forces to produce the highly acclaimed Two Pianos double CD, which featured Feldman’ s music for multiple pianos.