Morton Feldman - Morton Feldman: For Samuel Beckett
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CD Details
Artist: Morton FeldmanEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2000-01-25
Music Label: Cpo Records
Soundtracks:
- For Samuel Beckett, for chamber orchestra
Music reviews of Morton Feldman: For Samuel Beckett
Music Review: Hermetically Sealed World
Rating: 5 Stars
Feldman's late works are really entities rather than compositions. They are closed worlds, sealed off by their limited means and extraordinaty length. But For Samuel Becket is one of the more extreme of these pieces, not in length but in character. The work is close, almost claustrophobic and yet deeply alluring. It is rare in Feldman's output, closer to Coptic Light than to any other Feldman work that I know. The work is scored for solo strings, winds and brass in pairs and a small Feldmanesque group of piano, mallet instruments and celeste. The winds and strings create sustained sound clusters while the small group contributes small splashes of dissonant color chords. The basic material of the piece is set up at the beginning of the work and doesn't vary greatly throughout it's 40 plus minutes. Small variations in chords, rhythmic placement, tonal color and pattern make the interest in the piece. It is in Feldman's "oriental carpet" mode, in which the surface effect is static and symmetrical, but a closer listening reveals a wealth of subtle variations on a level just below the surface. This work will not reveal itself in casual listening. It requires a deeper concentration on the part of the listener, just as the work of Rothko or Clifford Still require a greater active role on the part of the viewer. Also unlike much music by Feldman, this work does not contain much silence. It is a close and crowded score, and when brief moments of silence are detected it is like a wisp of air from a crack in a window. This fits the dedication to Becket, who used silence, repetition and a certain hysterical claustrophobia in his writing to make his existential points.
I have not heard the competition for this disc so I can't make much of a comparison based on that. The timing on this CPO disc is about 10 minutes faster than the Kairos disc. Timing is everything in Feldman, so you may find that the Kairos disc has less of a claustrophbic feel. This all may be a matter of preference, as Feldman allows a wide range of tempi in this work, between 66 and 88 MM. CPO takes the fast edge of this and Kairos takes the slow edge. Both are sanctioned by Feldman's score.
Description of Morton Feldman: For Samuel Beckett
An earlier version of Morton Feldman's For Samuel Beckett existed on a 1992 hat ART CD performed by Ensemble Modern. Their take on this eerie, meditative study in slow, dissonant pulses and atonal moods was somewhat more muted than the disc under review here. The timings are virtually the same (about 43 minutes), but the Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin gives a more assertive role to the piano's out-of-sync declarations, betraying the work's skeletal underpinnings. This is not a transparent work, however. Feldman's music flows measure by measure, each with its own timing and key notations--very demanding for player and listener alike. This isn't the place to start with Feldman, but Feldman fans will want this as their reference disc for this important work. --Paul CookGeneral CDs
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