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Feldman: Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello (1987)

Aleck Karis / Curtis Macomber / Danielle Farina / Christopher Finckel

Feldman: Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello (1987)

Format: CD
Label: Bridge
UPC: 0090404944628
Catnr: BRIDG 9446
Release date: 03 April 2015
1 CD
 
Label
Bridge
UPC
0090404944628
Catalogue number
BRIDG 9446
Release date
03 April 2015
Album
Artist(s)
Composer(s)
EN
DE
IT

About the album

Feldman’s last work, Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello displays the qualities of the “late style”: complete mastery, utter assurance, and a kind of luminous melancholy. Like Palais de Mari, written a year earlier, it unfolds at a leisurely pace, with similar uses of repetition and recurrence, gentle rocking figures, and a somewhat restricted range. The measured unfolding of the material, without emphasis on dra- matic contrast or large fluctuations in the rate of change, enables the listener to focus on the work’s many subtle and beguiling details.

Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello zeigt Feldmans „Spätstil“: völlige Beherrschung seiner Kunst, absolute Sicherheit, und eine Art leuchtender Melancholie. Wie Palais de Mari, entstanden ein Jahr später, entwickelt es ein gemächliches Tempo, mit ähnlichem Gebrauch von Wiederholung, sanft wiegenden Figuren und einem begrenzten Ambitus. Die bedächtige Entfaltung des Materials, ohne Betonung des dramatischen Kontrastes oder schnellen Wechseln, erlaubt dem Hörer, sich ganz auf die subtileren, faszinierenden Details zu konzentrieren.
L’ultima opera di Feldman, Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello, possiede le caratteristiche del ‘tardo stile’: completa maestria, assoluta sicurezza, e una sorta di luminosa malinconia. Come Palais de Mari, scritto l’anno prima, Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello procede ad un ritmo tranquillo, con un uso simile della ripetizione e della ripresa, figurazioni ondeggianti e un’estensione in qualche modo limitata. Lo svolgimento misurato del materiale, senza enfasi sul contrasto drammatico o ampie variazioni nel ritmo del cambiamento, consentono all’ascoltatore di focalizzarsi sui molti dettagli sottili e seducenti dell’opera.

Artist(s)

Aleck Karis

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)

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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