Customer Reviews

String Quartet 2

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Late pieces by Morton Feldman are daunting to listeners and performers alike. Their extreme length, finnicky rhythms, strange chord spellings and long sustained tempi are scare off many performers. And the long durations and surface repetitions can scare off audiences as well. But if you listen underneath the surface, the music is brimming with telling detail and an almost rapturous love of sonority. It becomes hypnotic.

The Second String Quartet has an almost legendary reputation among Feldman's late works. Played without cuts and with all of Feldman's repeats, the work can last anywhere from five to six hours. The Kronos Quartet played excerpts of the work in concert, but balked at doing the entire score as written, feeling that it was more effort than they could sustain in performance. So the work has remained unheard but not untalked about since it was composed in the 80's. Now, in the last year two recordings have surfaced of the complete work, a reading by the Ives Quartet on Hat Hut and this recording by the Flux Quartet on Mode. Each reading has much to recommend it and Feldman fanatics will want both. But for me, Flux edges out the competition by just a little.

The String Quartet is a monumental work. The score is only 127 pages long, and layed out in Feldman's "gride style". Measures are laid out in nine sections on each page, regardless of time signature or number of notes in the measure. And yet, with repeats and at the speed Feldman requires the piece extends out almost infinitely. The language is one of minimalist repetition, but never simpleminded repetition. The first hour functions as an exposition, with a great variety of events in succession Events appear and disappear without fanfare. Some fade without ever reappearing and others come back hours into the piece, like ghost of themselves. In this way, Feldman explores the nature of memory as fully as Proust. Gradually, as the work progresses the dynamic range narrows to the very soft and the latent tension of the opening unravels over the last two hours until the whole piece comes to a lovely conclusion.

The Ives and the Flux ensembles take different approaches to the work. The Ives play without vibrato and with an ear toward microtonal flucuations in tone that are implied in Feldman's unorthodox note spelling. It is an entirely effective reading, clocking in at just over five hours. Fluxus' reading has a slightly more leisurely pace, coming in at a little over six hours. At this scale the differences in tempi are really minimal at the microlevel. But the reading is also more energetic, with a stronger contrast between dynamics. The few fortissimo sections are played full out, as opposed to the Ives more muted reading. As such to me, this gives the Flux reading a slight edge over the Ives, though I think both are excellent documents of this important work.

Incidentally, the Mode CD is available as a standard Audio CD but it is also available as an Audio DVD. I have the DVD version and I think for this work, that is the preferred mode for this piece. The DVD format allows the work to be presented complete, with no breaks for CD changes. So while you can listen to sections of the piece at a time if you choose, you also have the opportunity to hear the entire work as it would be presented in concert. The increase of cost is negligible, so I would highly recommend buying this work in DVD. You won't be sorry.

Perhaps I'm overstepping the bounds of my understanding, but the music of Morton Feldman seems to exemplify what Adorno refers to as the "objectification" of music. That is, this is sound that, through distinctive form and intentional inexpressiveness, achieves an existence of its own, apart from any sort of signification or narrative. The long (very, very long) late pieces by this composer seem to have this quality in particular, as if their heroic durations and interminable reworkings of a small number of basic elements explore every possible angle of a an undeniably present THING.

Feldman's second string quartet is by far his longest work, lasting over 6 hours, in this particular performance. I may be wrong (and these thing are difficult to gauge over such long durations), but it seems to me that there is a greater variety of musical material here than in other hour-plus late Feldman epics, such as For Philip Guston, Crippled Symmetry, For Christian Wolf, and For John Cage.

As I write this, I am only four hours into my first listening, but I feel compelled to put down my thoughts on a marvelous piece of work that already feels like a long time companion. Where have we been? Where are we going? These questions are pointless in the timeless present of Feldman's music. Although there have been recurring elements that I recognize upon their return, their constant transformations and variations make it difficult to remember just how much has changed, or how manty times this or that has re-occured. Although the familiar Feldman hush and sparseness predominates, there are rich, indescribably, beautiful tonal segements (at 4 hrs, 8 mins, I can remember two of these), as well as uncharacteristically rough textures and knotty tangles.

Feldman was the master of intuitive subtlety, and although his style is instantly recognizable, he's always presenting things in ways that baffle one's preconceptions of his work. After a couple of hours of music without thematic development, in a conventional sense, memory and analysis go out the window, and all that's left is living, breathing sound. Perhaps I have overstepped the bounds of my understanding. I'm beginning to feel that, just maybe, that's where Feldman's music really comes to life.

[I have the continuous dvd version. If you have a dvd player, it's the way to properly experience this work]

If you're reading a review of this CD, you probably know what you're getting into. This is definitely one of Feldman's most intriguing works not only because of its incredible length, but also because of the way Feldman engages the listener in a very active way for such a long time. A personal critique would be superfluous - you can decide for yourself whether the work has artistic merit, whether or not its length is justified, and the amount of aesthetic pleasure contained within. Regardless of personal feelings, the work exists and, thanks to a brave performance by the Flux Quartet, is now available on CD and DVD (but, good luck finding the Audio DVD!).

I tried in vain to find a copy of the DVD Audio version of this recording as five CDs in definitely an inferior way to experience this piece. It would be much better to press play and let the world drift away. The performance is quite remarkable. Flux maintain an intense interpretation throughout. The listener may break up the experience over time and revisit certain sections with fresh ears. Flux had one marathon chance to get it right - no edits, no stopping for a break. They treat SQ2 with respect, not as some sort of endurance/novelty challenge. At this point, a few string quartets have performed this work, but I would definitely place this performance among the top.

The one unfortunate aspect other than the 5 CD treatment is the packaging. The CDs come in paper sleeves housed in a flimsy cardboard container. We're lucky to have a performance of this caliber, but it's still unfortunate that the box is so worthless. The liner notes aren't bad, but a nice analysis of the work would have been helpful, but there is an interesting account of the preparation that went into the performance.

Overall, the CDs are worth the fairly high price. If you're familiar with Feldman, this will definitely interest you. If you're new, there are better places to start such as "Piano and String Quartet", "Crippled Symmetry", and "Triadic Memories". This is a wonderful document of an amazing performance.

I feel this is one of Feldman's best compositions, along with For Philip Guston.

I have both the Ives and this one, and prefer the DVD of this one. For one, you don't have to change the CDs every 70 minutes! As the other reviewer mentioned, they do not hurry anything, so the music proceeds ever so slowly, letting you spend a lot of time absorbing the bottomless depths of the textures. Once you start getting into it, you don't care about the length. ( And you don't have to listen to it all at once. )

The DVD also sounds very beautiful. I just have a cheap DVD and it is better sounding than my reasonably good CD player.
The strings are not harsh.

You also can turn the video on and see a Turkish (I think) rug, and watch the menu progress as it refers to its page number of the score. So this is also the one for score watchers.

Listening to this full quartet, all the way through, is a truly incredible experience. At the beginning, Feldman presents a variety of different sonic ideas (themes? motifs? no word in the traditional musical lexicon seems adequate); each idea is repeated several times, then another is presented, then another....

And then, just as the sheer number of musical ideas becomes almost too much to bear, just as you begin to wonder how many distinct, new ideas your mind can handle, you start to hear repetition, patterns. Recognizing the recurrence of something as simple as a series of descending fourths can be a moment of great joy, ecstasy even. It is the same kind of joy that mathematicians might find in an elegant proof, scientists in a well-designed experiment, or Turkish rug artisans in the study of their elaborate craft: the joy of making new discoveries, and of recognizing old patterns.

Perhaps I'm overstepping the bounds of my understanding, but the music of Morton Feldman seems to exemplify what Adorno refers to as the "objectification" of music. That is, this is sound that, through distinctive form and intentional inexpressiveness, achieves an existence of its own, apart from any sort of signification or narrative. The long (very, very long) late pieces by this composer seem to have this quality in particular, as if their heroic durations and interminable reworkings of a small number of basic elements explore every possible angle of a an undeniably present THING.

Feldman's second string quartet is by far his longest work, lasting over 6 hours, in this particular performance. I may be wrong (and these thing are difficult to gauge over such long durations), but it seems to me that there is a greater variety of musical material here than in other hour-plus late Feldman epics, such as For Philip Guston, Crippled Symmetry, For Christian Wolf, and For John Cage.

As I write this, I am only four hours into my first listening, but I feel compelled to put down my thoughts on a marvelous piece of work that already feels like a long time companion. Where have we been? Where are we going? These questions are pointless in the timeless present of Feldman's music. Although there have been recurring elements that I recognize upon their return, their constant transformations and variations make it difficult to remember just how much has changed, or how manty times this or that has re-occured. Although the familiar Feldman hush and sparseness predominates, there are rich, indescribably, beautiful tonal segements (at 4 hrs, 8 mins, I can remember two of these), as well as uncharacteristically rough textures and knotty tangles.

Feldman was the master of intuitive subtlety, and although his style is instantly recognizable, he's always presenting things in ways that baffle one's preconceptions of his work. After a couple of hours of music without thematic development, in a conventional sense, memory and analysis go out the window, and all that's left is living, breathing sound. Perhaps I have overstepped the bounds of my understanding. I'm beginning to feel that, just maybe, that's where Feldman's music really comes to life.

[I have the continuous dvd version. If you have a dvd player, it's the way to properly experience this work]

Yes, there is another recording of this work, as mentioned in Mr. Forbes review. The Ives Ensemble performance on hatART 4-144 is harder to find on Amazon because it does not come up in searches restricted to "Classical Music".

The relative timings are 4:52:35 (Ives) and 6:07:07 (Flux), so you could nearly squeak in the Ives Ensemble recordings of both Quartets I and II over the duration of the Flux Quartet recording. The single disc DVD option on Mode is nice, but if you happen to have the means to play a digitally ripped version on your favorite audio projector, there isn't much distinction. If fact, you might be tempted then to follow up, uninterrupted, with a complete Ring Cycle.

If the climaxes seem more intense on the Flux recording, as noted by the reviewer above, it is because the flux recording is more closely mic'd, close enough to project some distracting performer noises. Of course, climaxes are few and far between in this music--and really not the point. Feldman found his later inspiration in oriental rugs and the sparse abstract expressionism of painters like Rothko. While the stitches and brush strokes are important in such compositions, they are distinguished in meaning by more macroscopic perceptual relationships among patterns, colors and spaces. In that sense I find the aural perspective and relatively organic flow of the Ives Ensemble set more mesmerizing and effective.

That said, John Cage might have preferred to play both at once, and then wouldn't have been without either one.

Morton Feldman took quite a chance writing a six hour piece. The length makes it awfully hard to perfrom and a trying experience for the listener. The Flux Quartet has produced a brilliant recording of it and any fan of Morton Feldman or contemporary classical music should have this recording in their library. While it's not fo the faint of heart, the patient listener will feel truly enlightened after finishing this marathon piece.

Now I know what one of the questions you may be asking yourself could be: How can a piece stay interesting for over six hours? I can answer that question with four words: "Feldman's Second String Quartet." Feldman takes you on a surreal journey of color, texture and sound that will take you straight to your happy place. Using minimalist style composition Feldman takes the listener to places they've never been before. The piece just breathes. The length can be trying but any lover of minimalism will truly enjoy this piece. You will recognize recaped themes and really get a sense of form even though it may be a full hour before you hear a theme recalled.

It may be more valuable to pick up the DVD instead of the CDs as the DVD plays uninterupted. Even if you rip the CDs to a digital device, the transisitons aren't as smooth as some may like.

However this piece is not for the faint of heart. The length is just as definitive of the piece as it is hindering the piece from being universally enjoyed. I don't like to think of it as a piece, but a journey. So if your ears are up for a listening challenge, there's none more challenging than Feldman 2.

At first it seemed impossible: prior to 1999 (or so) the only known ensemble to perform it was the Kronos Quartet in 1983-4 (at least twice, in Toronto and Darmstadt, Germany). They were going to perform it a Feldman mini-festival in New York in 1996, but had to withdraw due to possible fatigue. Since 1999 there have been at least a few baker's dozens of performances (although there still has yet to be a performance in the San Francisco Bay area). Frequent enough to almost remove the word "rarely" from its performance description, but still quite a long way from reaching, say, Shostakovitch's Eighth String Quartet proportions (thankfully (not that there's anything wrong with Shosty 8 (there isn't) but its overplaying and many players' ignorance of his other fourteen quartets can almost be frustrating and annoying)).

This is Morton Feldman's curriculum vitae. An assemblage of "found objects", examined and re-examined. Those familiar with Feldman's other works will find bits and pieces from works composed immediately prior to this, including "For John Cage", "Patterns in a Chromatic Field" (aka, the untitled composition for `cello & piano), "Three Voices", and his first string quartet, as well as the other, shorter string quartet pieces that he wrote in the 1950's. Feldman also loved his Schubert, insisting that the musicians play portions of it like [presumably, the beginning of the slow movement of] the "Death and the Maiden" string quartet. At six hours, this piece could resemble a road trip when taken in full: you're looking out the window, the scenery changes, some of the buildings are the same with often subtle differences, things return, unexpected things appear. In the first 2˝ hours there's a short progression of a rising four note figure followed by a falling four note figure cushioned by `cello harmonic drone that springs up now and again, acting like a segue, a divider, a curtain, a wipe of the slate, a slice of pickled ginger after a great piece of sushi, a gasp of air before diving back into the pool, a pause for station identification. (The opening "Deal Music" from Stravinsky's Jeu de Cartes also came to mind.) Nothing announces its final appearance and before you know it, it has vanished. Occasionally there are some loud moments, just to keep you on your toes, but then the delicate moments return and order is restored. Some things return, sometimes verbatim with slight alterations, other times cleverly disguised but still maintaining its identity. Other things are tried out and abandoned in favor of other ideas. There is a progression of nine measures introduced part way through the third disc that gets shuffled upon its next go-around but it's not like you are comparing one version to another. ABCDE later becomes BDCEA, then CABED (or is it the other way around, or another?). Come midway through the fourth hour, things have slowed down to a comfortable crawl, like an exhaustion was built right in, with occasional spurts of "second wind". The four penultimate pages seem like an eternity, a summing up. Then comes the sunlight of the last page ("...the darkness has past and it's daylight at last." -Gilbert & Sullivan, Iolanthe). It's morning, afternoon, night and dawn.

Another important aspect of the Second String Quartet is time. Time does not become a factor to listening here. Like a baseball game (also with an absence of a clock), it is an escape from thinking about anything else. And something from John Cage also came to mind: I think it was from his "Lecture on Nothing" (see Silence); something like, "If anyone feels they should leave, they should go now." But there is nothing wrong with taking this in smaller portions as well (the index points allow you to do so). It's like looking at a selection of photographs. Or, sampling your favorite parts from a box of chocolates (no references to Forest Gump, OK?). Or, catching the highlights of a ballgame on the news: removed from its context, but substantial nevertheless (like Curtis Granderson hitting a three run homer, but you don't bother to see how the two runners before him got on base). In other words, one should have a little sense of what is happening before diving in; most expectations should be well enough abandoned. But that is not hard and fast essential: again, this may sound clichéd but this more like a journey rather than a novel.

The last thing (at least for now) that comes to mind about this Second String Quartet is the sense of tradition. The institution of the string quartet has now been in existence for over 250 years. It's the kind of institution where one can take liberties with, and usually succeed, that other chamber formats could not pull off (if you can find it in a library, Paul Griffiths' book, The String Quartet, A History, is an excellent tome on the subject; see the portion about Mauricio Kagel's quartet). A work of this magnitude could never get written for, say, a string quintet (Feldman's "Violin & String Quartet" does not really count; it is a technically a string quintet, true, but it is really more like a violin concerto accompanied by a low budget orchestra (I thank Frank Zappa for that designation)), although a string trio might receive something comparable (see LaMonte Young; and when in the heck will his string trio ever get commercially produced, or even his "Chronos Kristala" for string quartet? (sorry for the digressing and usual grousing...)). Anyway, this is the best I can talk about this Second String Quartet for now. I have listened to this many, many times, sometimes in full (a long work day can allow that), others in random portions. A piece of this enormous stature requires a different kind of listening "strategy". There are no rules as how to properly listen to this piece, just a sense of acceptance.

String Quartet II has all of the wonderful qualities of a great masterpiece of the 20th century, and not just for its length: its breadth (spanning both "light" and "dark" forms of minimalism), its clarity, but most of all its honesty. This is one of those pieces that remind you of the strange things you hear about from your next-door neighbor, the beautiful things you only rarely see in real life but you see all the time in dreams, the sky, almost empty; the night, the dark, water in a distant lake, the forest. These are things I think about when I hear "String Quartet II". You are always interested in what comes next. Sometimes, Feldman's music is gritty and tough and bleak, sometimes it's ethereal and mysterious, sometimes (like a couple of moments here in this great work) it's soothing and calmative. But it's never really forever, because it always is changing -- and that, I think is the real genius behind a work like this. That it changes constantly.

When I got married we had a string quartet just play a little excerpt from this from Page 20-24. We had our wedding on a warm (not too warm), breezy, airy day. On the way in, we noticed people's expressions -- not ones of blasé acceptance, but ones of confusion, wonder and on some, pure enjoyment. Feldman at a wedding? I think so.

Either way, get this CD and listen to it. See where it takes you. It could be a place you've maybe never been before. Or it could be somewhere comfortable you'd forgotten about all along.