Morton Feldmann - For Bunita Marcus 1985
Ivan Ilic
Paraty 135305 (ivancdg.com)
American avant-garde composer Morton Feldman, the pioneer of “indeterminate music,” began (like Varèse) with the orchestra making weird sound effects as tonal paintings and later simplified it to white noise like his famous Rothko Chapel where people could sit for hours in isolation, meditate and chill out. For further simplification he turned to the piano with long works lasting over an hour, like this one that sounds like soft notes moving slowly and undisturbed around the middle of the keyboard, always quiet, no crescendo and never reaching forte. Sometimes shrill and percussive very high notes interrupt in a different rhythm like a bird chirping, then a sudden blob of a broken chord in the lower register like a drop of water into a still pond ….
Listen to it lying down and soon you’ll drift and float, no longer awake but not asleep either, and when it’s suddenly over you feel as if you have been asleep and perhaps missed something. Wagner wrote such subliminal music like the ancient, atavistic shepherd pipe tune meandering in and out of the consciousness of the mortally wounded Tristan that miraculously breaks through his coma and returns him to life.
Feldman’s music operates on this level, but it is also a set of 22 very loose variations with changes so imperceptible, like things that happen in real life. When you expect it, it usually won’t happen but if you don’t, it might. You’ll notice the difference between each variation when you quickly sample the tracks. The whole thing is actually composed and written down, but then it has to be played to sound totally improvised or haphazard, completely unstructured. With his soft and wonderful touch pianiste extraordinaire Ivan Ilić’s mind is so dedicated and attuned to Feldman’s that he can do this like no one else can. It’s spellbinding. (You can get a taste of it along with commentary by Ilić at youtube.com/watch?v=V1B9uX4v1H0.)
