Morton Feldman - Early and Unknown Piano Works

Morton Feldman - Early and Unknown Piano Works
Debora Petrina
OgreOgress

We’ve all heard recordings described as being "for completists only." Well, this OgreOgress issue of hitherto unrecorded piano music of Morton Feldman is a paradigm case of such a project. Three of the six works here are performances of early, unpublished manuscripts, and only one of the offerings is a substantial, mature piece. Unfortunately, even that one, "Two Pieces for Three Pianos" (1966) is, based on this recording at least, not among Feldman’s better works. The "First Piano Sonata" is dedicated to Bartok, but it sounds a bit more like an early Schoenberg work, albeit more episodic and laden with breast-beating than the future Austrian renegade would have put together, even at fin de siecle. The other two pieces from the mid-forties, "Preludio" and "Self-Portrait" are folksier(!) and a bit less Scriabinesque, but all three of these works are not only immature, they represent a sort of innocent romanticism of a type that Feldman would soon strongly react against. There’s a bit of both Bach and Copland in the pretty, if slight, "Preludio," while "Self-Portrait" veers, though somewhat awkwardly, toward a more mature New Viennese approach. This 3:46 piece seems like the toughest of the lot to play, and it briefly gets away from Ms. Petrina in a couple of places. The "Three Dances," written for a solo dancer in 1950, are in a more recognizable Feldmanian pointillism and are enjoyable. They are, however, only about seven minutes in total duration, and are not really substantial enough to stand as an independent instrumental work—at least not as a memorable one. Interestingly, the third dance requires the pianist to play a drum and a glass with her right hand: it’s a cute effect. "For Cynthia" is a 40-second ditty, presumably written on a dinner napkin. As indicated above, the big piece here is "Two Pieces for Three Pianos," which Petrina handles alone with the help of overdubbing. The three piano parts are not consistent in their method of specifying durations, which one would expect to produce some interesting rhythmic results. Here, however, there is very little but homophony. For most of its thirty-five minutes, we are basically treated to a lethargic display of chord—pause—chord, delivered in a manner that would make it hard for any blindfolded listener to tell that more than one piano is being utilized (though such a one might guess the pianist is being more than usually liberal with his/her damper pedal). The echoing effects one would anticipate from a live performance are almost completely absent in this version. What’s worse, the glimpses of eternity that often emanate from a single chord in the best Feldman pieces and performances (check out the recent Tilbury 4-disc set on London Hall for a couple thousand examples) just don’t materialize here. Veniero Rizzardi’s (quite difficult to read) liner notes to the Petrina disc describe "Two Pieces" as a masterpiece. If it is, one would be hard-pressed to prove it from this plodding rendering. In my view, a much better introduction to Feldman’s wonderful output for multiple pianos is the old Columbia/Odyssey "The Early Years" LP, which contains three such works from the mid-fifties: if you can find one of these records around somewhere, snatch it up! (And pick up one for me too—mine’s all scratchy.) In the meantime, I suggest that Feldmaniacs feed any longings they have for new releases by immediately purchasing the marvelous Fong/Rangtzen Quartet performance of "Violin and String Quartet," also recently released by OgreOgress.

~Walter Horn