Written two years before his death in 1987, Morton Feldman's Piano and String Quartet is a shimmering, pristine musical event. Contrasting Aki Takahashi's widely-spaced piano arpeggios with Kronos Quartet's extended chords, Feldman allows lingering sounds from either the piano or the strings to haze over many of the piece's near-silences. Kronos plays their parts with tremulous fragility, often making pointedly clear the viola's musical valley between the leading violins and the trailing cello. By the time Feldman composed this piece, he was deeply committed to extended works--chamber pieces that could telescope motifs and worry their tonality so that it warbled between hauntingly atonal and familiarly tonal singing. This is a powerful, evening piece, one that can set an extravagantly crystalline musical mood. --Andrew Bartlett Amazon.com essential recording
 |  | Morton Feldman: Piano and String Quartet |  |
... recurring ... disorientating ... expanded loops and interludes ... anti-minimalist ... arch-modernist ... parastatic piano arpeggio apparitions ... elusive supraliminal strings ... uneasy pastoral ... zombie amniotic ...
hyper-expressionist absurdist ambient post-buddhist furniture music.
A spiral galaxy of stars to Aki Takahashi & the Kronos Quartet for recording this bizarre, surreal piece.
September 8, 2007J Scott Morrison has typically hit the nail on the head in his spotlight review. I've little enough to add except to say that Feldman's Piano and String Quartet is my absolute favorite Feldman piece. Among many loved pieces by this intriguing composer whose singular art marks the late 20th century as encouragingly fertile after all, for me, the Piano and String Quartet stands atop them all. I'm a musician and painter, and this is the ONLY music I ever allow when I'm painting. I figure this as maybe not surprising considering Feldman's well disclosed relationship to visual art. But at the same time, the Piano and String Quartet is music so whole it is impossible for it to play as 'background' music, thus it seems rather to afford a communion when I'm working, which quite says something to me about its importance. It's true that one of the great qualities of Feldman's scores is spaciousness. But even greater is the luxury afforded the written notes by that spaciousness. Music imbued with time, but time never for its own sake. Add to that the impeccable musicianship of Aki Takahashi whose playing, for me, opens entire new vistas of the feminine in art, and the indomitable Kronos Quartet whose jewelled work is ever new, ever important. Is there another opening to any score that rivals the first glass golden moments of the Piano and String Quartet? If there is, I've not found it. Feldman's scores treat the listener with abidingly profound respect. Nothing could be less true than that Morton Feldman's is music for aesthetes. Where that perception rises up, nothing is said about Feldman's aesthetic and everything dismaying is noted about a culture of immediate consumption that burdens us all. I also recommend to you Feldman's 'Give My Regards To Eighth Street' (I've yet to read 'Morton Feldman Speaks:') for miraculous insights about his work, and many pixie-like pages of humor and loving consolation. If you're looking for a passel of knowing commentary about Feldman's many scores, read Chris Forbes' absorbing reviews of many Feldman recordings in these review pages. I've learned a great deal from him, and am grateful for that. Begin to reap the rewards of truly listening. This is music so attuned it demolishes category, and reawakens hope.
January 19, 2007Like the concentrated energy of an atom, if this lengthy piece is condensed, note for note, down to 2.5 minutes, it sounds like Ike Turner's "Rocket 88" played backwards.
June 16, 2006This has to be one of the most extreme pieces of music ever composed and recorded. And you have to be very patient to listen to the whole thing from start to end. But the patient are always rewarded. If you want something unique, truly experimental, hypnotic, and captivating, get this. This is minimalism in its purest form.
March 20, 2006I think this is the CD to buy if you like puzzles, deep conversation with a valued interlocutor, or thinking problems through. Feldman's 12-tone music is really intended as a kind of intriquing, thought-nourishing background, not as the object of one's pointed concentration in and of itself. When you try to focus on it, you end up in a very tense mood. When you simply ALLOW it to be forgotten and recede, it's purpose comes into play.
Acedemic or retro pretention is not neccessary, as Feldman was the very picture of an American character bent on enjoying himself (the guy actually worked in his father's laundromat most of his life while working on his compositions in his private leisure) This piece (and pretty much all else Feldman composed) was never intended to financially support career music students, it was meant to be enjoyed without being the center of one's attention, attended to at one's convenience and for the sake of one's own private, utterly personal ends.
Aki Takahashi--expressive and thoughtful in his interpretation of the loose "suggestions" written by the composer--plays other of Feldman's compositions in an equally engaging manner, but this particular recording is a small gem of its own worth the price of admission.
February 15, 2006More reviews at Amazon.com ...
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