Morton Feldman

Morton Feldman’s The Viola in My Life (1970/71) is a work of great scope and detail. Each of its first three parts is scored for viola and a variety of chamber ensembles, while the last pairs viola with orchestra in what Feldman calls a “translation” of the first three. Unlike his earlier forays into indeterminacy, Viola is thoroughly composed. Its genius lies in Feldman’s ability to forge massive amounts of empty space into a layered resonance that is anything but “minimal.” The music slowly undulates in tune with the viola’s crests and fades, touched by patches of darkness like a figure slowly walking through lattice-obstructed sunlight.

Overlapping textures and soft, shifting timbres are the most recognizable features of Morton Feldman's music, and his attractive sonorities draw listeners in ways other avant-garde sound structures may not. This music's appeal is also attributable to its gentle ambience, a static, meditative style that Feldman pioneered long before trance music became commonplace. The three works on this disc are among Feldman's richest creations, yet the material in each piece is subtly layered and integrated so well that many details will escape detection on first hearing. In Piano and Orchestra, the piano is treated as one texture among many, receding to the background and blending with muted brass and woodwinds in a wash of colors. Cello and Orchestra might seem like a conventional concerto movement, especially since the cellist is centrally placed on this recording and plays with a rather lyrical tone. However, Feldman's orchestral clusters are dense and interlocked, which suggests that the cello should be less prominent and blend more into the mass of sounds behind it. No such ambiguity exists in the performance of Coptic Light, which Michael Tilson Thomas and the New World Symphony Orchestra play with even dynamics and careful attention to the work's aggregate effect, which is mesmerizing.

Feldman’s 75-minute work dedicated to his friend John Cage was written in 1982. In this new version, Aisha Orazbayeva (violin) and Mark Knoop (piano) set out to draw the listener into the charged space between the performers.

There's always been a crossover appeal among avant, jazz artists with renegade contemporary classical composers. As with various musical forms, and perhaps life in general, rules are sometimes meant to be broken. String Quartet features a 1979-penned composition by Morton Feldman, recorded by the highly-regarded Dutch group known as the Charles Ives Ensemble.

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..

Anthony Burr and Charles Curtis present this collection of curated compositions from Alvin Lucier and Morton Feldman. Two Lucier pieces, August Moon and Trio For Clarinet, Cello & Tuba are presented here for the first time. Liner notes are excerpted from a lecture on Morton Feldman given by Alvin Lucier.

Morton Feldman - Flute, Cello, Oboe, Piano & Orchestra
Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Saarbrücken / Hans Zender
2xCD | EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 422 MB | Full Artwork: 53 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: CPO # 999 483-2 | Country/Year: Germany 1997, 1970's
Genre: Classical | Style: Contemporary, Post-Modern

"Johannes (Hans) Wolfgang Zender (born 22 November 1936 in Wiesbaden) is a German conductor and composer. (…) From 1988 until 2000 Zender taught composition at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt am Main. In 1997 Zender was awarded the Goethe Prize of the City of Frankfurt. Since 1999 he has been Permanent Guest Conductor of the Southwest German Radio (SWR) Symphony Orchestra in Baden-Baden and Freiburg…"

The story of how Morton Feldman and John Cage first met has now become elevated to the status of legendary musical folklore. During a 1950 New York Philharmonic performance of Webern’s Symphony Op. 21, Feldman decided to leave the concert at the interval. In the lobby he met Cage. As Cage says, “we both walked out of a Philharmonic concert in which Webern had just been played, and we shared the desire not to hear anything else because we had been so deeply moved.” It was the beginning of a deep friendship that was to influence both their respective creative spirits. Morton Feldman became a friend, flatmate and student of John Cage.