For John Cage (1982) by Erik Carlson

Erik Carlson

For John Cage (1982)

Format: CD
Label: Bridge
UPC: 0090404949821
Catnr: BRIDG 9498
Release date: 01 June 2018
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Label
Bridge

UPC
0090404949821

Catalogue number
BRIDG 9498

Release date
01 June 2018

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

Morton Feldman’s “For John Cage” is the second of seven large-scale works dedicated to artists, a series which includes Frank O’Hara, Bunita Marcus, Christian Wolff, Stefan Wolpe, Philip Guston, and Samuel Beckett. Feldman met John Cage in 1950, at a time when Feldman’s composition studies with Stefan Wolpe had reached a kind of dead end. Cage gave him encouragement, enthusiasm and permission to be himself. They remained friends until Feldman’s death in 1987. In its austere texture, “For John Cage” gives equal weight to the violin and piano parts. The fact that the two instruments often play similar material makes the contrast between the sustained sounds of the violin and the decaying sounds of the piano especially clear.

Morton Feldmans "Für John Cage" ist die zweite von sieben großformatigen Arbeiten, die anderen Künstlern gewidmet sind, darunter Frank O'Hara, Bunita Marcus, Christian Wolff, Stefan Wolpe, Philip Guston und Samuel Beckett. Feldman traf John Cage 1950, als Feldmans Kompositionsstudium bei Stefan Wolpe in eine Art Sackgasse geraten war. Cage gab ihm Ermutigung, Enthusiasmus und die Erlaubnis, er selbst zu sein. Sie blieben Freunde bis zu Feldmans Tod 1987. In seiner strengen Textur gibt "For John Cage" den Geigen- und Klavierstimmen das gleiche Gewicht. Die Tatsache, dass die beiden Instrumente oft ähnliches Material spielen, macht den Kontrast zwischen den anhaltenden Klängen der Geige und den verklingenden Klängen des Klaviers besonders deutlich.

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...

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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Erik Carlson (violin)

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 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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