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Karis Plays Webern, Wolpe & Feldman

Aleck Karis

Karis Plays Webern, Wolpe & Feldman

Format: CD
Label: Bridge
UPC: 0090404942020
Catnr: BRIDG 9420
Release date: 25 April 2014
1 CD
 
Label
Bridge
UPC
0090404942020
Catalogue number
BRIDG 9420
Release date
25 April 2014
Album
Artist(s)
Composer(s)
DE

About the album

Der Pianist Aleck Karis stellt auf seiner CD drei Komponisten zusammen, die über viele Jahre verbunden waren.
Morton Feldman studierte in jungen Jahren bei Stefan Wolpe, dessen Einfluss er erst viel später eingestand. 1950 begegnete Feldman seinem Landsmann John Cage nach einer Aufführung von Anton Weberns Sinfonie. Aus der gemeinsamen Bewunderung für den Österreicher entwickelte sich eine jahrelange Freundschaft.

Artist(s)

Aleck Karis (piano)

Aleck Karis has performed recitals, chamber music, and concertos across the Americas, Europe and in China. As the pianist of the new music ensemble Speculum Musicae he has participated in over a hundred premieres and performed at major American and European festivals. His appearances with orchestra have ranged from concertos by Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin to those of Stravinsky, Messiaen and Carter. His five solo discs on Bridge Records include Aleck Karis performs Schumann, Carter, Chopin; Aleck Karis: Mozart Recital; Stravinsky: Music for Piano 1911-1942; John Cage: Sonatas and Interludes; and Karis Plays Webern, Wolpe & Feldman. His two discs on Romeo Records are Piano Music of Philip Glass and Late Piano Music of Frederic Chopin. Last month, Bridge released his...
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Aleck Karis has performed recitals, chamber music, and concertos across the Americas, Europe and in China. As the pianist of the new music ensemble Speculum Musicae he has participated in over a hundred premieres and performed at major American and European festivals. His appearances with orchestra have ranged from concertos by Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin to those of Stravinsky, Messiaen and Carter. His five solo discs on Bridge Records include Aleck Karis performs Schumann, Carter, Chopin; Aleck Karis: Mozart Recital; Stravinsky: Music for Piano 1911-1942; John Cage: Sonatas and Interludes; and Karis Plays Webern, Wolpe & Feldman.
His two discs on Romeo Records are Piano Music of Philip Glass and Late Piano Music of Frederic Chopin. Last month, Bridge released his most recent disc, Feldman's haunting last work Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello. Karis has studied with William Daghlian, Artur Balsam and Beveridge Webster. He is a Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego, and Associate Dean of the Division of Arts and Humanities.

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Composer(s)

Anton von Webern

Together with Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg, with whom he formed the Second Viennese School, Webern laid the foundation for a large part of 20th-century music. Yet, he did so in a completely unique way. Whereas Berg was still largely influenced by the Romantic Period, and Schoenberg was a true expressionist, Webern took a more adventurous path. Of course, his music was just as atonal as the music of his peers, but he turned away from the classical-romantic tradition in many more ways.  Generally, his pieces are short works written for small ensembles. Above all, his works sound empty. Webern became a man of miniatures, of which his Variations for piano op. 27 are his best-known examples. Moreover, in his rigid music...
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Together with Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg, with whom he formed the Second Viennese School, Webern laid the foundation for a large part of 20th-century music. Yet, he did so in a completely unique way. Whereas Berg was still largely influenced by the Romantic Period, and Schoenberg was a true expressionist, Webern took a more adventurous path. Of course, his music was just as atonal as the music of his peers, but he turned away from the classical-romantic tradition in many more ways.

Generally, his pieces are short works written for small ensembles. Above all, his works sound empty. Webern became a man of miniatures, of which his Variations for piano op. 27 are his best-known examples. Moreover, in his rigid music he is strongly influenced by medieval music, preceding composers such as Arvo Pärt. However, Webern's music is not as warm as Pärt's music, but colder and more distant. Webern creates a truly unique and new musical universe, which is why his is music is still exciting today.


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Morton Feldman

Morton Feldman was born in New York in 1926 and died there in 1987. Just like Cage, a close friend, he was an American composer – an American artist – an American in the true sense of the word. He identified himself by differentiating his views on composition from those of his colleagues in Europe. He was proud to be an American because he was convinced that it enabled him the freedom, unparalleled in Europe, to work unfettered by tradition. And, he was an American also in what may have been a slight inferiority complex in the face of cultural traditions in Europe, something he proudly rejected and secretly admired. Like any true artist, Feldman was endowed with a sensitivity for impressions...
more
Morton Feldman was born in New York in 1926 and died there in 1987. Just like Cage, a close friend, he was an American composer – an American artist – an American in the true sense of the word.
He identified himself by differentiating his views on composition from those of his colleagues in Europe. He was proud to be an American because he was convinced that it enabled him the freedom, unparalleled in Europe, to work unfettered by tradition. And, he was an American also in what may have been a slight inferiority complex in the face of cultural traditions in Europe, something he proudly rejected and secretly admired.
Like any true artist, Feldman was endowed with a sensitivity for impressions of a wide variety of sources, literature and painting in particular. His affinity to Samuel Beckett has enriched music literature by a unique music theatre piece, Neither, and two ensemble works. His friendship with abstract expressionist painters gave birth to a range of masterpieces, Rothko Chapel in particular. But even the knotting of oriental rugs gave Feldman musical ideas (The Turfan Fragments).
To the question as to why he preferred soft dynamic levels, he replied: “- Because when it’s loud, you can’t hear the sound. You hear its attack. Then you don’t hear the sound, only in its decay. And I think that’s essentially what impressed Boulez . That he heard a sound, not an attack, emerging and disappearing without attack and decay, almost like an electronic medium.
Also, you have to remember that loud and soft is an aspect of differentiation. And my music is more like a kind of monologue that does not need exclamation point, colon, it does not need…” Feldman also had an intriguing reply up his sleeve when it came to answering the question why he composed in the first place: “You know that marvellous remark of Disraeli’s? Unfortunately, he was not a good writer, but if he was a great writer, it would have been a wonderful remark. They asked him why did he begin to write novels. He said because there was nothing to read. (laughs). I felt very much like that in terms of contemporary music. I was not really happy with it. It became like a Rohrschach test”.
More than twenty years since his death, Morton Feldman’s music is as alive as ever.

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