The album ‘Rothko Chapel’ addresses a network of musical
relationships and inspirations, taking as its main focus Morton
Feldman’s work named for the Houston, Texas multi-faith chapel built to
house Mark Rothko’s site-specific paintings.
Feldman considered
that his ‘Rothko Chapel’ lay “between categories, between time and
space, between painting and music”, and described the score as his
“canvas”. Amongst his most important influences were abstract painters,
his friend Mark Rothko prominent amongst them. (Rothko, for his part,
yearned to “raise painting to the level of music and poetry”.) Feldman
was also liberated by the freewheeling example of John Cage’s work. “The
main influence from Cage was a green light,'' Feldman said. ''It was
permission, the freedom to do what I wanted.'' Cage, the most relentless
of 20th century experimentalists, didn’t acknowledge what he called an
“ABC model of ‘influence’” but always had a special fondness for Satie, a
musical inventor of good-humoured originality with whom he could
identify.
Feldman’s piece was first played in the chapel in 1972.
On the 40th anniversary of the opening of the Rothko Chapel in 2011, a
concert was held there bringing together works of Feldman, Cage and
Satie. This programme was reprised for the present CD with recordings
made at other Houston locations - Rice University (Cage, Satie) and the
Brown Foundation Performing Arts Theater (Feldman).
Leading viola
player Kim Kashkashian negotiates the subtle, glowing textures of
Feldman’s planes of sound, joined by Sarah Rothenberg on celeste, and
supported by percussion and choir. Rothenberg, on piano, plays Satie’s
Gnossiennes and Cage’s Inner Landscape, and the Houston Chamber Choir
sings Cage’s Four, Five and more, illuminating this rarely heard choral
music. (Presto Classical)
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