Aisha Orazbayeva, Mark Knoop MORTON FELDMAN For John Cage

Morton Feldman and John Cage met at a New York performance of Webern’s aphoristic Symphony in 1950, the pair’s friendship enduring until Feldman's death in 1987. Some of Feldman's late chamber works are inordinately long. For John Cage, written in 1979, lasts 75 minutes in this performance. Trying to describe exactly why and how this music ‘works’ is near-impossible. Describing it as a formally diffuse extended duet between violin and piano, the pair often on the edge of audibility, will send some folk running for the hills. Repeated hearings bring the work’s three-part structure into sharper focus, the transformations and allusions seemingly more recognisable each time.

What's magical about so much of Feldman's music is how he can make the most uncompromising dissonance sound warm and consoling. This slow-paced piece doesn't contain hummable tunes, but it's intensely beautiful at times, Mark Knoop’s, soft, bell-like piano chords sharing the space with Aisha Orazbeyava’s violin. Near the close, the violin’s double stopping almost suggests the presence of a third player. “I tried to bring into my music just very few essential things that I need,” said Feldman, and after having overdosed on Rued Langgaard (see below), this disc proved to be a perfect musical decluttering. Nicely engineered, it’s one of several new releases on the label All That Dust, each one neatly presented and well annotated.

Juliet Fraser / Mark Knoop MICHAEL FINNISSY Choralvorspiele / Andersen-Liederkreis

London based pianist and conductor Mark Knoop is known for his fearless performances and individual interpretations. He has commissioned and premièred countless new works and worked with many respected composers including Peter Ablinger, Joanna Bailie, Michael Finnissy, Bernhard Lang, Cassandra Miller, Matthew Shlomowitz, and Steven Kazuo Takasugi. His versatile technique and virtuosity also bring fresh approaches to the standard and 20th-century repertoire.

My music contains many musics, but impure, misremembered, smudged and melted, torn apart yet not completely erased. (Michael Finnissy)

Michael’s music is gnarly, gristly even — one senses keenly that it is the product of an intellectual yet instinctive wrestling with the very philosophy of music. (Juliet Fraser)

MORTON FELDMAN Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello

"Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello" (often abbreviated to "PVVC") was Morton Feldman's final composition, receiving its premiere on July 4th 1987, less than two months before the composer's death from pancreatic cancer on September 3rd. This recording of the piece dates from January 2017 at Henry Wood Hall, where it was recorded by Simon Reynell. The quartet of Mark Knoop on piano, Aisha Orazbayeva on violin, Bridget Carey on viola and Anton Lukoszevieze on cello had performed "PVVC" the previous September at Café Oto, on a night that stuck in the minds of musicians and audience, alike, for being one of the year's hottest. 

Having come through that night successfully, the January recording afforded the quartet a valuable opportunity to apply what they had learnt from the Oto performance and the audience's reaction to it. As Knoop has commented, "I always like returning to things after a first performance as there are some aspects of the music which can only reveal themselves in performance, no matter how much rehearsal is done."

The recording runs for seventy-four minutes, making it a challenge to maintain concentration both for the performers and the listener. The composition is as uncomplicated as its title suggests. Lacking any formal structure or obvious peaks and troughs, it evolves at its own glacial pace, with the introduction of even the smallest motif acquiring significance. While it is in progress, its twin fascinations lie in the smooth, effortless ease with which Feldman achieved that evolution without disquieting the listener, and the skill with which the quartet perform the music without occasioning comment.

Throughout, piano and strings operate together as an integrated unit, seeming to think, move, inhale and exhale as one. Altogether, it makes a beguiling listening experience but, because of that, concentration can easily be lost. With time and effort, it is possible to maintain focus throughout, whereupon the true beauty of the piece reveals itself, more and more with each new listening. An important and valuable addition to both the Another Timbre catalogue and the Feldman discography.“ (John Eyles / All About Jazz)