Customer Reviews

Morton Feldman: Piano and String Quartet / Aki Takahashi, Kronos Quartet

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When I asked earlier reviewers of recordings of music by Morton Feldman, weirdears and Edward Wright, where I should start with the music of Morton Feldman, I asked if I should go for the monumental - five hours long - Second String Quartet. They steered me away from that and suggested others. I chose this one. I had only a vague notion of what the music of Feldman would be like. I knew that it tended to go on for a long time, that it was 'minimalistic' (although it's not like other minimalists like Reich, Glass or Riley), and that it tended to be subdued. All those things are true, I found, with this piece, the Piano and String Quartet. What I didn't realize was that it would be hypnotic and, to borrow weirdears' assessment, 'addictive.'

The first time through I found myself gritting my teeth wanting more to happen. And it never did. And I was impatient and frustrated. The second time through I simply let it play in the background as I did something else. The third time through, having determined that it was not 'awful' and probably really quite good if I'd let it be, I decided to really listen through its entire length and see what I could hear. That's when I came to understand that Feldman's music repays close listening. There are very subtle happenings--phase changes, harmonic changes, minuscule 'events,'--and I came to really admire the concentration of the musicians involved--in this recording pianist Aki Takahashi and the Kronos Quartet. And then I recalled reading somewhere that the Kronos Quartet has given up playing the Second Quartet--that five hour span--because, as I remember it, they said they'd gotten 'too old.' I can understand that. This is, for all its minimal dynamics and slow tempo, enormously difficult music to play because of the intense concentration involved.

What of the music itself? I felt my pulse and breathing slowing down, my tension easing away and yet an inability to pull myself away from concentrating on it. In some ways it must be like meditation, except I found my mind active, not lulled. It became a puzzle whose solution I needed to find, even as I felt calmed by it.

What I'm trying to say is that this is not like any music I've ever listened to before, and it took new 'ears' and 'mind' to take it in, but once I did I was repaid. The general layout is delicate arpeggios or single notes in the piano against slowing evolving mostly diatonic chords in the strings, never rising above a modest mezzo piano. Simple enough. But strangely evolving. And it goes by slowly enough that one has time to really think deeply about what is happening.

I think there are two valid ways to hear this music. One is to let it pass over you, or through you, without your giving it much attention. But the more rewarding way is to HEAR what is happening.

Thank you, weirdears and Edward Wright. And thank you, Aki Takahashi and Kronos.

Scott Morrison

I have a friend who swears that Feldman's music is narcotic. I don't know if I'd go that far...for me it certainly isn't soporiphic, but it is deeply addicting. And Piano and String Quartet is perhaps the most addicting piece I've heard from Morty. I know why Feldman was interested in daunting length because I never want this work to end.

Feldman is a minimalist in the most natural sense...like Mondrian or Rothko in painting, or Robert Creely in poetry, or Becket in Theater. Feldman's minimalism is based on limiting the means of composition and leaving space on his sonic canvas. (as opposed to Reich, Riley and Glass who limit musical means but then cover the page with their patterns. It's what a friend of mine calls energy minimalism.) In the case of Piano and String Quartet, the basic musical means are easily described. The quartet play delicately balanced chords, while the piano plays ethereal fillagrees...arpeggios and crystalline chords, all at very low volume levels (the piece never gets louder than piano). Each iteration of this material arises from silence and recedes back into the silence. It sounds profoundly natural, like waves of sound. The musical language is lush and haunting...neither tonal or atonal, but something that floats in between. (Another big difference between Feldman and the minimalist school is that Feldman's harmonic sense is more complex...and may have actually had some influence on later developments in minimalism, particularly on Reich's more chromatic music of the 80's onwards.)

The real art of this piece is in the details. Though the basic compositional form stays rather static throughout the piece, there is never a literal repeat. Each new statement of the material changes in small but, in the context, monumental ways. The chords change slowly and subtley, the piano goes from aprpeggios to solid chords. The string halo of harmony changes in weight and register, the rhythms (meticulously written out by Feldman...there is no rubato here...Feldman wrote it all in)make subtle changes both in durations of notes and of the rests and silences. Anything that breaks the pattern is significant. In this context, when the cello enters with a pizzacato passage about half way into the piece, the effect is shattering.

I can't exactly describe the effect of this on me...it's meditative but not like Part...it's more like something that makes me intensely aware of the beauty of the individual moment (the ecstasy of the moment in Morty's words) The effect is curiously autumnal, like late Brahms. You feel it almost as an ache in the heart at the beauty and frailty of the passing world. (Sorry this is so nebulous, but late Feldman seems to inspire such poetic musings, I find.)

The performance on this disc is about as perfect as you can find. Feldman's music is notoriously difficult to perform. (I've tried to play some of the early piano pieces myself and they are fiendish, even though they don't sound it.) The difficulties are not really technical...this isn't Liszt or Paganini. But the sustained concentration for the performer is unbelievable. No measure is exactly the same in rhythm, and you have to count like mad. The results on this Cd however are sublime. You are not aware of the effort of the performers, just the waves of sound floating in and out of consciouness. And Takahashi is sublime. There isn't a bad note in the performance. (Incidentally, I belong to a listserve on Feldman and, though members can rarely agree on anything else, this album always gets the highest rate of reccomendation.)

Like others here, I'd hesitate to recommend this to newcomers to Feldman's work. Better to listen to Rothko Chapel or the Tilson Thomas Coptic Light recording. In both cases the works on the discs are only at most a half an hour long...Piano and String Quartet clocks in at almost 80 minutes. But once you get hooked on Feldman you'll want to explore this work, which I think is one of Feldman's most ravishing and strongest. (And once you graduate from this one, you may want to tackle the new Hat Art recording of String Quartet No. 2 which is breathtaking and runs over 4 hours!)

There's no question that Morton Feldman's music can be maddeningly long, minimal, and soporiphic to those unwilling to enter his particular sound world. But if you're willing to try, this is as good a recording of his music as you're likely to find.

As far as the composition, I personally found this to be as strong a work as he wrote in his later years. And as for the performance: Kronos has never sounded better. This work requires stamina, focus, and coloration as opposed to dexterous virtuosity (of which they were certainly capable); Kronos does the job magnificently. Kudos to the recording engineers as well, who manage to emphasize the "sound." Aki Takahashi was one of three pianists of choice for Feldman during his lifetime, and I can hear why.

The performance is maximum length for one CD (79 & 1/2 minutes) so I suspect all parties involved wanted to see that the work was SLOW enough, but fit the format's constraints.

If I was to recommend an introductory recording to Feldman's music, I'd probably choose "Rothko Chapel" first. But if you really want to dive in...try this one.

...all of which are well deserved. This is an extremely well played piece. The individual phrases are beautiful but...
Try this thought experiment. Imagine you have never heard the "To be or not to be" speech from Hamlet. You know nothing of the train of its thought, the beauty of its English, its cultural resonance. Now imagine that you are hearing it performed by one of our greatest interpreters, an Olivier, a Burton or a Kline. Someone with a truely beautiful voice. Now imagine them intoning the speech softly speaking one word every 20 to 30 seconds or so but at irregular intervals. Could you follow the flow of the argument, could you hear the flow of the poetry? Would you want to? Sure, especially with repeated listenings, you could put it all together but would you enjoy the poetry as much as you would if it were spoken at a normal rate?
Now read the reviews below. They speak of the concentration, of the need to learn how to hear this piece. I understand that some music requires that and have been willing to do that work many times. Music is a demanding mistress.
But with this piece, I just don't hear it even after repeated listenings. For me, there is little payback. It is one thing to hold a phrase in your ears long enough to try to relate it to something heard twenty seconds ago, it is another to relate both of those to something heard fourty-three seconds earlier and so forth. For me this piece does nothing more than establish the limits of my ability to contextualize isolated phrases played at extended irregular intervals. Having established that I am ready to move on to something more meaningful for me.
As always, the above rant claims to be representative only of my own point of view. The other reviewers, many of whom I respect and read in order to learn from, feel very differently. I will say this. Feldman is a great composer, no argument there. So it might well be worth your time listening to this CD to discover your own reaction. But don't say no one warned you.

J 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.

I enjoy this beautiful, mystical music. It is a Piano & String Quartet performed exquisitely by Sensei Aki Takahashi (p), Mr David Harrington (v1), Mr John Sherba (v2), Mr Hank Dutt (viola), and Ms Joan JeanRenaud (c). In this piece from 1985, Professor Morton Feldman (1926-87) writes what Mr Mark Swed terms as a "fully determined piece of very long duration." This aspect may be disconcerting to some listeners. Mr Swed acknowledges as much by writing, "The time that Felman's pieces consume, however, has been their most daunting aspect to many harried modern listerns, dependent upon the modern world's excess of stimuli." This may be true, however, I find the piece quite rewarding. The more deeply I listen to it, the more I sense it transcends time and space. It is indeed a spiritual experience for me. From the notes, there are two quotes of Professor Feldman which I feel are apropos. "I prefer never knowing when you are gonna hear something, when you are gonna see something." "What I am after is somewhat like Mondrian not wanting to paint bouquets, but a single flower." If you are interested in the music of Professor Morton Feldman, or in quiet, contemplative music, this CD will interest you.

Morton Feldman died in 1987, just two years after writing this, what many considered his consummate work. A composer known for his idiosyncratic views of music and philosophy he respected the absence of sound as a part of his musical fabric almost as much as his gracing the pages of his scores with well-considered notes.

In this recording of the Piano and String Quartet, for piano & string quartet the artists who premiered the work recreate the extended exploration of sound and beauty this piece represents. Pianist Aki Takahashi and the Kronos Quartet perform this nearly one and a half hour long work with gentle attention to detail - and the apparent patience of Job. The work is expansive and strolls the atmosphere with piano arpeggios played with quartet chords of string sound that are extended to the point of disappearing in space until another statement of music is gently placed before us. The effect may be soporific to the novice, but spend some time with the other works by Feldman and that tendency will fade. This is a work for the ages, not unlike Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, though unlike the Messiaen work composed in the Holocaust camps and breathing of the futility of that time and the hope for something beyond, this work instead carries the listener into regions beyond the clutter of now into a space where it becomes music as spiritual as any composed. This piece for piano and string quartet takes its time to enter the psyche, but the journey is so rewarding. Grady Harp, December 10

I 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.

the drama of this composition is incalculably precise and unnerving. proceeding at a glacial pace, you could choose to resign this to backround music, but the heart of this experience is just the opposite.

what you want to do is play this cd and deprive all your other senses- turn off the lights, sit still, and listen. give an hour of your life over to completely immersing yourself in what I think has to be one the most beautiful compositions I have ever experienced.

from seemingly repetitive patterns emerge the slightest deviations and developements that seem absolutely earth-shattering in this stark relief. i compare listening to this to the zen art of demura painting, where the beauty of the simple circle is found in the character of every bristle of the brush that creates the little tangential slivers and brief empty spaces.

as they say, god is in the details. but they're not the details your gonna see if you don't let go and give yourself, and every bit of your consciousness, to this sublime capsule.

This 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.