Browse by Artist: FELDMAN, MORTON

Artist:	FELDMAN, MORTON
Title:	For Philip Guston
Label:	BRIDGE RECORDS
Format:	4CD
Price:	$50.00
Catalog #:	BRIDGE 9078CD

1997 release. Performed by the California EAR Unit (flutes, percussion, piano, celeste). "Here is the California EAR Unit's recording of the late Morton Feldman's monumental, four hour long For Philip Guston (1984). Included in this discount priced, four disc set is an enhanced multimedia track, which includes Feldman's remarks as well as a photo montage of the composer. Morton Feldman stands as one of our century's darkest and quietest musical poets. His music seems a muffled yet spiritually inspired reaction to the speed, noise and horror of the events of the 20th century -- much as in the work of the painter, Mark Rothko. For Philip Guston, a composition from Feldman's last years, is music that attempts to suspend time, but without the nervous 'sequenced' energy that dominates so much of today's 'process art.' In For Philip Guston, the gigantism of Feldman's time-scale is offset by the extreme intimacy and seductiveness of the composer's expression. As Bridge Records' annotato Alan Rich puts it: 'This is music of an outward immobility and inward irresistible propulsion, random yet purposeful-its construction, intricate and precise.' Four disc set includes an enhanced CD track, and Feldman in conversation."

Artist:	FELDMAN, MORTON
Title:	Crippled Symmetry
Label:	BRIDGE RECORDS
Format:	2CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	BRIDGE 9092CD

1999 release. Performed by The California EAR Unit (Dorothy Stone, flutes; Arthur Jarvinen, percussion; Vicky Ray, piano/celeste). "Morton Feldman's music continues to exert its fascination on listeners and record companies alike. After releasing its highly successful recording of the more than three-hour-long For Philip Guston, Bridge once again returns to the California EAR Unit for Crippled Symmetry, at only 87 minutes a mere bagatelle in terms of Feldman's late output. Well, maybe not. Scored for flutes, mallet percussion, and piano/celeste, Crippled Symmetry does exactly what the title says: it toys with not quite exact repetitions of short melodic and rhythmic shapes. As each pattern exhausts itself, a new one takes its place. All of this happens at a slow tempo, at the lowest possible dynamic level. Only the composer's own exquisite sense of sonority and timing determines how the various musical patterns are organized, and how long they persist. What makes Feldman's music so fascinating is its complete honesty: it truly does create a series of sonic shapes moving through space, allowing the listener to literally 'see' with his ears the slowly changing patterns of sound. It's sort of like watching a mobile turn almost imperceptibly in a gentle breeze. And much as it may outrage the faithful, this is great music to fall asleep to -- the perfect cure for insomnia, in fact, not because it's dull, but because it's so hypnotic... Bridge's sonics are exactly as they should be: transferred at a high level so that you can set the volume low, relax, and watch the music." -- Classics Today

Artist:	FELDMAN, MORTON
Title:	For Christian Wolff
Label:	BRIDGE RECORDS
Format:	3CD
Price:	$50.00
Catalog #:	BRIDGE 9279CD

2008 release. Performed by the California EAR Unit (Dorothy Stone, flute; Vicki Ray, piano, celesta). "For Christian Wolff is one of Morton Feldman's final compositions, and stands alongside the four-hours-plus For Philip Guston, the 70-minute For John Cage, and the six-hour String Quartet II. Writing about hearing this work, Christian Wolff says that 'I found the experience of listening to it beautiful and interesting -- it moves away partly from our (Morty's, John Cage's and mine) original preoccupation with just sound and sonority into areas of self-awareness about listening, being a listener, as such, because there's so much time to be thinking of this and that as well as just listening.' The California EAR Unit's performances of Feldman's For Philip Guston (BRIDGE 9078CD) and Crippled Symmetry (BRIDGE 9092CD) have received high praise from the international musical press."

Artist:	FELDMAN, MORTON
Title:	For Philip Guston
Label:	DOG W/A BONE
Format:	4CD
Price:	$46.00
Catalog #:	DWAB 002CD

Originally released in 2000. Looking for just one Feldman CD to give to someone that you like more than yourself? There's more than one correct answer to this elusive question, but this overwhelming set (closing in on 300 total minutes) is an utter classic, with paralyzing sonic power. "Feldman is recognized as one of the 20th century's most influential composers. Feldman's artistic principles were shaped in the early 1950s by his association with composers Cage, Earle Brown and David Tudor, and painters Philip Guston, Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Robert Rauschenberg, to name a few. In keeping with Feldman's aesthetic privileges of scale over form, For Philip Guston, composed in memory of his late friend, expands to a monumental five hours. On the front cover of the comprehensive 4CD set is a reproduction of Feldman's portrait by Philip Guston. The liner notes include a conversation between composers Walter Zimmerman and Kotik, exploring the many facets of Feldman's music." Recorded in 1995 and performed by S.E.M. Ensemble (Petr Kotik, flute, alto flute, piccolo; Joseph Kubera, piano, celeste; Chris Nappi, vibraphone, marimbaphone, glockenspiel, chimes).

Artist:	FELDMAN, MORTON
Title:	Turfan Fragments
Label:	DOG W/A BONE
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	DWAB 004CD

Features these 2 long pieces: "For Samuel Beckett" & "The Turfan Fragments". Performed by: The Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble, with Petr Kotik, Conductor. "For Samuel Beckett and The Turfan Fragments are Feldman's only chamber orchestra compositions. Both were commissions: The Turfan Fragments by the Swiss-Italian Radio Orchestra in 1980, For Samuel Beckett by the Schönberg Ensemble, Amsterdam, in 1987. Both titles are descriptive and suggest how Feldman arrived at a particular concept for each piece. The Turfan Fragments is a succession of short sections, which could indeed be described as fragments. The title relates the composition to manuscripts from Turfan (the southwest region of present-day China), which are in the collection of the Preussischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin. These calligraphic remnants, going back to the ninth century, were brought to Germany before World War I and Feldman must have seen them while living in Berlin in 1971. In contrast, For Samuel Beckett is based on a single idea of several chord progressions unfolding continuously for almost an hour. In 1977, Beckett wrote a text for Feldman, to be used as the libretto for his opera Neither. Feldman's description of Beckett's writing most eloquently suggests what was on his mind when composing For Samuel Beckett: 'here's something peculiar about it [the Beckett's text]. I can't catch it. Finally I see that every line is really the same thought said in another way. And yet the continuity acts as if something else is happening. Nothing else is happening. What you're doing, in an almost Proustian way, is getting deeper and deeper saturated into the thought.'"

Artist:	FELDMAN, MORTON
Title:	Give My Regards To Eighth Street: Collected Writings Of
Label:	EXACT CHANGE
Format:	Book
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	EC FELD

Originally released pre-9/11, finally reprinted in 2007! "What was great about the fifties is that for one brief moment -- maybe, say, six weeks -- nobody understood art. That's why it all happened." -- Feldman. "Morton Feldman (1926-1987) is among the most influential American composers of the 20th century. While his music is known for its extreme quiet and delicate beauty, Feldman himself was famously large and loud. His writings are both funny and illuminating, not only about his own music but about the entire New York School of painters, poets, and composers that coalesced in the 1950s, including his friends Jackson Pollock, Philip Guston, Mark Rothko, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank O'Hara, and John Cage. Together with John Cage, Feldman is the principal representative of the New York School of composers, a group of American avant-gardists who in the 1950s and 1960s challenged the European music establishment with their use of graphic scores, chance techniques, and indeterminate compositions. Yet despite Feldman's devotion to these radical innovations, his music was known above all for its sensuousness and melancholy. 'There never was and there is not now in my mind any doubt about its beauty,' wrote John Cage in his landmark book Silence. "'t is, in fact, sometimes too beautiful.' It is Feldman's intuitive, almost spiritual approach to music that has caused him to become one of the most performed composers of our time; since his death in 1987, no fewer than 80 CDs of Feldman's music have been released, and his works can now be heard in classical music halls worldwide. His music has also won a large following outside the classical establishment; Feldman is one of the most listened to and discussed composers among fans (and practitioners) of avant-garde rock and techno music. Give My Regards to Eighth Street is an authoritative collection of Feldman's writings, culled from published articles, program notes, LP liners, lectures, interviews, and unpublished writings in the Morton Feldman Archive at SUNY Buffalo (where Feldman taught for many years). Feldman's writings explore his music and his theories about music, but they also make clear how heavily Feldman was influenced by painting and by his friendships with the Abstract Expressionists. As editor B.H. Friedman notes in his introduction, Feldman's 'writing about art is also of lasting importance.'"

Artist:	FELDMAN, MORTON
Title:	Music For Piano And Strings Volume 1
Label:	MATCHLESS RECORDINGS (UK)
Format:	DVD-AUDIO
Price:	$29.00
Catalog #:	MRDVD01

The Smith Quartet (Ian Humphries, violin; Darragh Morgan, violin; Nic Pendlebury, viola; Deirdre Cooper, cello) with John Tilbury (piano) live at the Huddersfield Festival of Contemporary Music, 2006.

       Tracklist:
       01. For John Cage, 1982 (1:29:01) (Darragh Morgan and John Tilbury)
       02. Piano and String Quartet, 1985 (1:29:30)
       Total playing time: 2:58:31.

       "This is a video DVD, although images are only used for the DVD menu and the first 25 sec of each track. The screen will be black for the remainder of the pieces. The disk can only be played on a computer with DVD drive or DVD player. The DVD format was chosen because most of the works to appear in this Smith Squartet with John Tilbury series are too long for an uniterrupted playback in the conventional CD medium." Region: 0, PAL format.

Artist:	FELDMAN, MORTON
Title:	The Late Piano Works Vol. 1: Triadic Memories
Label:	MDG SCENE (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$19.00
Catalog #:	MDG 6131521CD

Performed by Steffen Schleiermacher (piano). "Steffen Schleiermacher once again sets out to present the piano compositions of an important 20th-century composer. Vol. 1 of his three-part series featuring Morton Feldman's late piano works contains the 'Triadic Memories.' It is 90 minutes long -- quite short by this American composer's standards! During the 1970s, Morton Feldman developed a new interest in the carpets of Anatolian nomads. He was motivated by an artistic fascination transcending the collector's passion. Although only five or six basic colors are used in the carpets, they are never identical; the nuances produced during the coloring of the threads make the difference. Feldman's music is similarly structured. The wealth of his composition is revealed only under the acoustic microscope. Filigree deviations in the repeating individual tones and chords are detected only by those who take the time to contemplate the peaceful flowing of finely set tones. Steffen Schleiermacher deliberately and reflectively approaches the piano texture of almost monochrome effect and has the tones sound as softly as possible amid constant employment of the pedal. He sets rhythmic and tone-color nuances -- well-thought-out -- in opposition to the slightest hint of uniformity." Total palying time: 80'46.

Artist:	FELDMAN, MORTON
Title:	The Late Piano Works Vol. 2: For Bunita Marcus
Label:	MDG SCENE (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$19.00
Catalog #:	MDG 6131522CD

Performed by Steffen Schleiermacher (piano). "With volume two of Feldman's late piano works, the recording is devoted to one piece dedicated to the former student and close colleague Bunita Marcus. Feldman's music never is opulent but spare and sparse with few notes that sometimes are stretched over periods of silence. Pianist Steffen Schleiermacher is a specialist in modern music for piano both as a composer and performer. His MDG recordings have garnered an amazing amount of praise."

Artist:	FELDMAN, MORTON
Title:	Aki Takahashi Plays Morton Feldman
Label:	MODE
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MODE 054CD

2006 repress, new 24-bit hi definition remaster. First release in Mode's Feldman Edition, of shorter solo piano works, performed by Aki Takahashi, recorded 1995. "Morton Feldman's sound-world no longer needs an introduction. Feldman was especially fond of Aki's playing, so much so that he had selected certain works particularly for her. Together they toured this program, with Feldman speaking about the compositions and Aki performing them. The CD contains selections from those recitals as well as works close to Aki's heart, many receiving their first recording and available on CD for the first time. Of particular note is the premier recording of Feldman's earliest published composition -- ILLUSIONS -- which is unique in his oeuvre: it is mostly loud and fast!"

Artist:	FELDMAN, MORTON
Title:	First Recordings: 1950s
Label:	MODE
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MODE 066CD

"A remarkable discovery of over 75 minutes of Morton Feldman's music. This disc represents 13 unrecorded early works spanning 1950 to 1953, many previously unpublished. Highlights: his only works for magnetic tape, 'Intersection,' realized in 8-channels by Feldman with John Cage and Earle Brown. Considered lost, the work has been restored and presented here for the first time in 40 years. Also: his score for 2 cellos to Hans Namuth's film of Jackson Pollock, presented in its entirety including narration by Pollock himself; the solo piano collection 'Nature Pieces' which combine elements of Feldman's youth with his mature style; previously missing works from the Extensions and Intermission cycles. The performances are superbly played by pianist Philippe vandré and the Turfan Ensemble from Frankfurt."

Artist:	FELDMAN, MORTON
Title:	Complete Works for Violin & Piano
Label:	MODE
Format:	2CD
Price:	$31.00
Catalog #:	MODE 082/83CD

Repressed for the first time in a number of years. "Here, collected for the first time, are all of Morton Feldman's compositions for violin and piano. It is also a kind of walk through his compositional development, from the Webernesque early 'Piece for Violin and Piano' (1950); through the experiments with graphic notation in 'Projection 4' (1951); followed by an excursion into the jungle-like density of David Tudor's energy in 'Extensions 1' (1951); to the cryptic notational riddles of 'Vertical Thoughts 2'(1963); from the dry carpet-dusting 'pring of Chosroes'(1977) to the extended sound canvas of the late Feldman in 'or John Cage'(1982). He remarked with an eye twinkling: 'My music is just like Webern. Only a little bit longer.'"

Artist:	FELDMAN, MORTON
Title:	The Straits of Magellan - Indeterminate Music
Label:	MODE
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MODE 103CD

"A unique collection of Feldman's 'indeterminate' works; incorporating new types of notation (including graph scores) and involving a considerable degree of indeterminacy in regard to pitch, dynamics, etc. This is the first time the complete Durations and Projections series have appeared on a single disc. It is a rewarding experience to hear the Durations and Projections played together, imparting a sense of Feldman's mastery of instrumentation and timbre while savoring the metamorphosis of its shifting colors, weights and densities of sound. The Two Pieces (first recording) reveal techniques which evoke a piano's resonance, as Feldman uses chords in which most tones immediately fade after their entrance, leaving only one or two sustained tones. The Straits of Magellan focuses on static the and 'vertical' experience, as well as on the constantly changing and fluctuating density of their sonic events allowing one to relish the subtlety and sensuousness of this music which startlingly also conveys a jazzy character. The superb performances, recorded in Germany, are by acclaimed pianist Philipp Vandré and the Turfan Ensemble."

Artist:	FELDMAN, MORTON
Title:	The Barton Workshop Play Voices & Instruments
Label:	MODE
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MODE 107CD

"This CD is comprised of works from Feldman's Early Period (late 40's until the late 60's) and Middle Period (late 60's/early 70's until the early 80's). In the beginning, like all young creative artists, Feldman was working through alluring influences as well as the influence of his teachers, towards the moment when he would find his personal creative voice. With the exception of the vocal solo Only, this disc documents all the earliest works that Feldman chose to publish. Journey to the End of Night (1949) shows unmistakable influences from his study with Stefan Wolpe, yet it also shows a clear command of this musical language. This dramatically clear and forceful work -- with extremely high vocal writing -- is set to texts extracted by Feldman himself from the long novel of the same title by Céline. In 1957, Feldman began to use repetition of material to make a homogeneous texture, static yet with small degrees of movement. By the early 1960's, he created timbral ambiguity by having all instruments play very softly, with a minimum of attack."

Artist:	FELDMAN, MORTON
Title:	String Quartet No. 2
Label:	MODE
Format:	5CD
Price:	$57.00
Catalog #:	MODE 112CD

"Feldman's monumental String Quartet No.2 is in one unbroken movement. The FLUX Quartet performance is complete, lasting a total of 6 hours 7 minutes and 7 seconds. Available in 2 Editions: a 5-CD set OR complete and uninterrupted on 24-bit audio DVD! In the 1970s Feldman took up the study and collecting of antique Turkish rugs, a highly evolved and exquisite folk art. The rugs are intricately patterned, symmetrical in basic design but with constant variation and displacement in the detailed execution of that design; strikingly and subtly colored, including fine variegations of principal colors resulting from the dyeing process. Analogies are clear to Feldman's music as it takes up large-scale patterning, partly working with his familiar subtle gradations of rhythm and instrumental color and ostinati, loops or extended repetitions of a sounds, partly -- and especially in this second string quartet -- continually finding new and surprising qualities of color. There are a number of sounds in this piece unlike anything one has heard from a string quartet. One can experience the work uninterrupted complete with no need to change discs on the DVD Edition."

Artist:	FELDMAN, MORTON
Title:	Triadic Memories
Label:	MODE
Format:	2CD
Price:	$25.00
Catalog #:	MODE 136CD

Performed by Marilyn Nonken, recorded 2003. "The place Triadic Memories takes us is full of illusions, not only of function and direction but also of timelessness and stasis. This almost 90 minute, single movement work for solo piano is available in two formats: as a specially priced 2-CD set and complete and uninterrupted on one DVD-Audio. There is no indication of tempo. For this recording, Ms. Nonken chose a steady eighth-note pulse throughout that approximates the heart rate at rest. Unfolding in time at this rate, the work's geography its rapturous peaks and long, low valleys is brought into relief. Of Ms. Nonken's October 2003 performance of Triadic Memories, John Rockwell wrote in The New York Times:'Ms. Nonken played it with a relaxed, almost rubber-wristed calm, caressing the keys without losing rhythmic definition. A lovely performance of a lovely piece'."

Artist:	FELDMAN, MORTON
Title:	Composing By Numbers - The Graphic Scores 1950-67
Label:	MODE
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MODE 146CD

Performed by The Baron Workshop. "When Feldman met Cage in the winter of 1949, they quickly established a friendship based upon a similarity of intent and a mutual respect for the work each was doing. Soon thereafter, Feldman showed a string quartet he had been writing to Cage. Cage's enthusiasm for this work, and delight in Feldman's being unable to explain 'how' he had written it, gave Feldman an all important 'permission' to follow his intuition. This period of time marks the beginning of Feldman's 'graph music', so named because it was written on graph paper, but also because it is part of a larger movement in 20th century music during which music notation departed from the traditional staff notation and began to incorporate a great deal of graphic symbols. In these 17 works, Feldman was working towards a vision of plasticity and freedom. One hears in these works the micro-polyphony of later Ligeti, noise which he later rejects, and often a ferocity within the sound/performance --characteristics which he eschewed in his later work. Of the 17 works he composed in the graphic style, this recording offers a total of 13 of them." 'Projection' (complete), 'Intersection' (complete), 'Marginal Intersection', Out of 'Last Pieces', 'The Straits of Magellan', 'In Search of an Orchestration'.

Artist:	FELDMAN, MORTON
Title:	Rothko Chapel/Why Patterns?
Label:	NEW ALBION
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	NA 039CD

Another essential Feldman document, featuring two key works: "Rothko Chapel" performed by the University of CA Berkeley Camber Chorus, recorded 1990. "Why Patterns?" performed by the California EAR Unit (flute, piano, glockenspiel), recorded 1990. Feldman, re: "Rothko" -- a haunting, minimalistic orchestral work: "The total rhythm of the paintings as Rothko arranged them created an unbroken continuity. While it was possible with the paintings to reiterate color and scale and still retain dramatic interest, I felt that the music called for a series of highly contrasting merging sections. I envisioned an immobile procession not unlike the friezes on Greek temples." "Why Patterns?" is one of Feldman's classic small ensemble works for shifting patterns and colors, a simply yet stagging palette of sound.

Artist:	FELDMAN, MORTON
Title:	The Viola in My Life
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80657CD

"The music on this recording illustrates the essential integrity of the work of Morton Feldman (1926-1987) and one of its fundamental strengths -- its continuously unfolding unanimity of purpose. There are few composers of his generation whose first and last published work (in Feldman's case 'Journey to the End of Night' of 1949 and 'Piano and String Quartet' of 1986) span youth and final years with such a concentrated viewpoint. There are, however, landmarks in the music of Feldman that are largely technical and notational. There are the graphic pieces, the first from 1950 and the last from 1964, in which some parameter of composition is not specified (often pitch). There are the 'free duration pieces,' both solo and ensemble, in which there is instruction either for sections of the piece or for its entirety. 'False Relationships and the Extended Ending' (1968) is a late example of this kind, although 'Why Patterns?' (1978) is a variant of the principle. There are also the conventionally notated works in his oeuvre, one of which is 'The Viola in My Life' (1970). It may be that Feldman's music will always strike a certain kind of listener as idiosyncratic -- a denial of the time-honored ways in which music articulates itself. I think that Feldman was deeply offended by this response, by this notion that his music was singular because it was, as some might say, 'missing something.' Though it is true that his values of graduation can be exceedingly fine, when one enters this scale and comprehends it, something truly new and wonderful opens up in the art of music -- a world in which the relative and the absolute become engaged with themselves."

Artist:	FELDMAN, MORTON
Title:	Last Pieces (Performed By Stephane Ginsburgh)
Label:	SUB ROSA (BELGIUM)
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	SR 189CD

"This new release on Sub Rosa is the third in a series of three concentrating on avant-garde piano compositions (prev. volumes: Triadic Memoris, Piano Pieces For More Than 2 Hands). American composer Morton Feldman, born 1926, is now recognized as an one of the most important composers of the 20/21st century. After he met John Cage in the late forties he developed a method of intuitive composing which allowed Feldman to work on the outside of the strict classical system. On this recording pianist Stephane Ginsburgh plays three piano compositions which capture the essence of Morton Feldman's artistry, pure moments of sound and infinity. Or as Ginsburgh quoted: 'Ask the music first and use your concentration.'"

Artist:	FELDMAN, MORTON
Title:	For Bunita Marcus
Label:	SUB ROSA (BELGIUM)
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	SR 246CD

Morton Feldman (1926-1987) remains a legendary and key figure in modern American composition. A pioneer of aleatoric and indeterminate music, he was a master of minimal improvisation. Despite many thematic fluctuations in Feldman's compositional style throughout his career, a significant turning point took place in 1949, when he met John Cage, commencing an artistic association of crucial importance to music in America in the 1950s. Cage was instrumental in encouraging Feldman to have confidence in his instincts, which resulted in totally intuitive compositions. He never worked with any systems that anyone has been able to identify, working from moment to moment, from one sound to the next. His friends during the 1950s in New York included the composers Earle Brown and Christian Wolff; painters Mark Rothko, Philip Guston, Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock and Robert Rauschenberg; and pianist David Tudor. As Feldman himself stated, "My past experience was not to 'meddle' with the material, but use my concentration as a guide to what might transpire. I mentioned this to Stockhausen once when he had asked me what my secret was. 'I don't push the sounds around.' Stockhausen mulled this over, and asked: 'Not even a little bit?'" The piano music on For Bunita Marcus slowly draws you towards silence by a process of atomization or repetition -- as do some of Beethoven's or Schubert's late compositions. You realize therefore how useless it is to try to act, to push his music against its own will. Playing or listening to Morton Feldman leads you to very unique moments, like those you feel when you look at a starry summer sky, unable to measure its dimensions because it is beyond your understanding. A sense of infinity within a finite space. This particular piece was written in 1985 and named after a composer and student of Feldman's. Performed by Stephane Ginsburgh on a Bösendorfer 225, and recorded in 2006.

Artist:	FELDMAN, MORTON
Title:	Patterns In A Chromatic Field
Label:	TZADIK
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TZ 8002

Performed by: Charles Curtis (cellos), Aleck Karis (piano); recorded 2003. "The definitive recording of one of Morton Feldman's most important and challenging pieces, played at the composer's marked tempos, and taking all the notated repeats. Fitting neatly onto one CD, this is Feldman at his most extreme. A dramatic display of virtuosity performed with passion and precision by two of the leading exponents of new music in the world. Out of Feldman's enormous oeuvre, Patterns in a Chromatic Field stands apart as a work of sudden change, contrast and surprise, and as such fits perfectly into the Tzadik catalog."

Artist:	FELDMAN, MORTON
Title:	For Philip Guston
Label:	WERGO (GERMANY)
Format:	4CD
Price:	$64.00
Catalog #:	WER 6701CD

Performed by Julia Breuer (flutes), Matthias Engler (vibraphone, marimba, glockenspiel, tubular bells), Elmar Schrammel (piano, celesta). Recorded 2007. One of Feldman's classic long-term late works, written in 1984. "Wergo is proud to present Morton Feldman's four-hour-long trio For Philip Guston, performed by the ensemble Breuer-Engler-Schrammel. Feldman disagreed with those who regarded his works since the 1970s as being too long. 'In music, it's very difficult to distinguish between a thing's proportions and its form,' he wrote. 'My pieces aren't too long -- they seem to fit the temporal landscape I provide. Would you say that 'The Odyssey' is too long?' Feldman wrote this gossamer work in memory of his best friend of more than 20 years, the Canadian-born painter Philip Guston (1913-1980). The initial motive, C-G-A-fl at-E-fl at, refers to John Cage, who had introduced the two men to each other in 1950, and the sound world evokes the methods used by Guston and other Abstract Expressionists in their art."

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