reviews
Morton Feldman – Violin and String Quartet (Fong/Rangzen Quartet)
Morton Feldman – Violin and String Quartet
Christina Fong/Rangzen Quartet
OgreOgress
There is something almost harrowing about the later works of Morton Feldman. Although they aren’t the least bit jittery, they are as obsessive in their tranquil way as Cocteau’s opium drawings. A particular chord or three-note motif may be examined exhaustively, perhaps for a good half hour, only to be returned to when some aspect of the intervening material calls up a reminiscence. While Feldman’s early work utilized a kind of evolving repetition that differed from the usual suspect minimalists by its eschewal of chugging for individual points of light, repeating patterns were, almost from the start, an important feature of his through-composed work. But it was only with the compositions of the 1980s that Feldman’s investigations of the small (never really microscopic, however) became marathon events, with layer upon layer of a one- or perhaps two-chord passage being peeled, re-sealed, tilted slightly, and unpeeled again. His two-hour Violin and String Quartet, which received its first recording on this impossibly beautiful OgreOgress recording, is no exception. Usually when string quartets are expanded to quintets, it’s through the addition of another viola, another cello or a string bass. I don’t know of any other examples of the instrumentation chosen here (and I also don’t know if this piece resulted from a commission), but Feldman’s love of (and skill with) high harmonics certainly made this grouping a natural one for him. It’s a species of anti-concerto, though. Fong is much more likely to hover quietly above her comrades than to take anything like a traditionally leading role. The piece is difficult—rhythmically, as well as for reasons involving intonation—but is dreamily handled here: the balance and tempi are perfect, the tone of all the players, whether providing harmonic glisses or faintly insistent conventional notes, is uniformly delicate without ever being prissy. Those reedy “Feldman chords” may seem vulnerable, even helpless, but they are always perfectly in tune. While many performers (along with their rapt listeners) might be hypnotized by Feldman’s seemingly infinite representations of cell divisions and reunitings, Ms. Fong and the Rangzen Quartet remain focused and committed throughout. Violin and String Quartet is a wonderful example of Feldman’s mature output that strangely went unrecorded until 2002, but it is here magnificently realized on this two-disc OgreOgress release.
~Walter Horn
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Points of Interest
“His two-hour Violin and String Quartet, which receives its first recording on this impossibly beautiful OgreOgress recording”
dunno which was first, but there’s been a Hat Art version of this out for at least a year or so.
OgreOgress version released early 2002. Hat Art version released early 2003.
Who’s playing on the Hat version, Jon? There’s so much Feldman about now, we’re spoilt for choice. There are even two versions of the mammoth second string quartet, one on Hat one on Mode. God knows how many people have recorded “For Bunita..” & “Crippled Symmetry”.
“Who’s playing on the Hat version, Jon?”
Peter Rundel and the Pellegrini Quartet.
there’s a very good Feldman site here:
http://www.cnvill.demon.co.uk/mfhome.htm
they list three performances each of For Bunita Marcus and Crippled Symmetry. Palais de Mari has thirteen recorded versions!
Dan, it’s the Pelligrini Quartet with Peter Rundel. The Hat version was reviewed here last summer:
http://www.bagatellen.com/archives/reviews/000189.html
Thanks for those comments, folks. I should have said it WAS the first recording of the piece. I’ll make a couple of corrections.
I’ve managed to listen to disc one of both the Hat and OgreOgress sets in the last 24 hours, for the sake of comparison. First, I really love the lethargy of this piece. It has become a favorite of mine in the Feldman oeuvre.
The interpretations are strikingly different with seperate marks of appeal though it is undoubtedly the same music. Some observatsions:
Fong’s version is quiter than the Rundel, in that the overall mix seems to have been mastered at a lower volume.
Fong and Rundel seem to have taken different roles in their interpretations: Rundel taking the upper register against the quartet, while the chief violin in Fong’s version is at the fore in the mid range. (I could be completely wrong about this)
I like the slided notes down the fingerboard that come down from many of Fong’s notes/chords. They feel more animated this way, less static, and more part of the “response” from the quartet.
Relatedly, Fong’s version sounds more like a quintet playing, in that all of the instruments share an equal dynamic and the notes are played almost simultaneously, vice Rundel’s, whose violin is easily picked out from the delayed (time, not digital) chords from the quartet.
More later, but it’s intriguing that this beautiful music can come off with the same amount of pleasure in such unique interpretations.
Wanted to say hi to Glenn Freeman. Just listened yesterday to his contributions on the OgreOgress recordings of Cage’s “Three 2″ and “Six” as well as “Four 4″ and enjoyed them a great deal. Hope to have write-ups posted here in the next week or two.
“I should have said it WAS the first recording of the piece. I’ll make a couple of corrections.”
(walto)
The HatArt version was recorded in October ‘97. Does it matter? Fong, as usual, is sweet, warm, bland. If you like to be hugged, this is for you.
“The HatArt version was recorded in October ‘97. Does it matter? Fong, as usual, is sweet, warm, bland. If you like to be hugged, this is for you.”
Do I detect a slight preference for the Hat version here?! If so I agree - since this post went up a year ago I got the Hat version and prefer it. More abstract, chilly even. You’re right, Fong does manage to make Feldman sound quite cuddly, but I guess that only goes to show how much leeway there is even with the idiosyncracies of his notation. Do you feel the same way about the Fong / Freeman Cage releases? Those are quite frosty, I find.
“Do you feel the same way about the Fong / Freeman Cage releases? Those are quite frosty, I find.”
Reviewing Three 2/Twenty-Three/Six/Twenty-Six on OgreOgress in these pages, Brian Olewnick spells out the problem for me:
“More, there
I like to be hugged.
Free hugs!
Thanks, but I want mine from Fong.
Well, who wouldn’t, Walto?
http://www.bagatellen.com/images/cageone6.jpg
Hmm. I wonder if you’d say that if Ms Fong was a 55 year old balding white bloke with a straggly beard and a yellow moustache..
You mean a sweet, warm and bland type guy?
“it’s a shame Fong couldn’t have incorporated that added element of quiet danger in her version” (DW in PT 2/2003)
“it serves both to differentiate Fong’s playing from the other two violinists and to underline the warmth and humanity of the composer’s work (both all too often overlooked). The rich soundscapes of “Violin and String Quartet” are welcome proof that truly top-notch performances of American experimental music do not have to be dry and ascetic to succeed fully.”
– Dan Warburton (PT Review)
Great to know recordings and critics, like all things, change over time … recordings are so much more like performances than we think … never static and always changing …
..and full of inexplicable contradictions and irrational outbursts.. all of which sends me back to listen to the music again, though in the few hours that remain before I pack up and bugger off for 2 weeks holiday, the dilemma is should I choose to spin the Hat or the Ogre version? There’s not time for both..
See you all on August 24th, if I can tear myself away from the website, with all its endearing flaws..