Feldman: Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello (1987)

   in Piano International (Nov, 2015)
Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello was Morton Feldman’s last work, composed only a few months before his sudden death from cancer in 1987. Like many of his late works, it is long, quiet, has no dramatic changes of tempo or dynamic and is hypnotically repetitive, although its patterns unfold gradually through a myriad of tiny, subtle variations, so the music is always in flux, similar yet never the same. Figures and chords seem to linger, like long sighs or intakes of breath (the piano’s damper pedal is held down throughout), but less like sighs of pleasure or sadness than something more profound, as if the soul itself were breathing.

Pianist Aleck Karis, …