Search - Morton Feldman, Vincent Leterme :: Morton Feldman: Late Works with Clarinet

Morton Feldman's (almost) complete works featuring clarinet

Sparky P. | composer, all around nice guy, yada yada yada | 10/08/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This disc presents the three major works featuring clarinet, one from the seventies, two from the eighties. Throw in 1962's brief "Two Pieces for Clarinet & String Quartet" (not on this recording but found on hatArt's Clarinet & String Quartet release, out of print, again well worth seeking out) and you have all of Feldman's works highlighting clarinet/bass clarinet.



The earliest piece here is "Three Clarinets, `Cello and Piano", dated 1971. This piece explores two simple contrasts: the soft attacks of the clarinet and `cello (when bowed) long tones and hard attacks of the piano and `cello (when plucked). Even occasionally are there some loud notes and "swelling dynamics" (crescendos and decrescendos), but otherwise, it's very soft the rest of the way (of course).



"Bass Clarinet & Percussion" was written in 1981, as Feldman was writing mostly extended length pieces, but this is a very compact eighteen minutes (Webernian proportions in comparison!). This is a definite exercise of shadows and fog, of stasis and variation. At the start the bass clarinet plays a recurring melody (the very same line that begins "Why Patterns" and a few other works written at that time) that will reappear in different registers, then with octave displacements of certain notes. Of the four known recordings of "Bass Clarinet & Percussion" (as of this writing), this performance is the best I have thus far heard. The high tympani parts sound very clean and in tune, not just sounding closer to high tom-tom. (In the last pages, one percussionist is playing a kettledrum tuned to A on the top line of the bass clef; the second percussionist plays another kettledrum tuned a major second lower to G and the bass clarinetist cuts in between the two with an A flat. The other recordings sound muddy and unclear but I can actually make out a chromatic melodic contour from the three players in this one.)



Then we have the most substantial piece of this lot, "Clarinet & String Quartet". This was written in 1983, the year that also saw the completion of the Second String Quartet (six hours' duration) and Crippled Symmetry (an hour and a half duration). Compared to those two, Clarinet & String Quartet, at a "mere" forty minutes, is a miniature (almost). And like the other two similarly titled works from the mid 1980's (Piano & String Quartet and Violin & String Quartet) we have here two contending entities (although never competing against each other), in this case the clarinet is the lead and the quartet support. The quartet is almost always heard as a unit, providing a canvas for the clarinet's tone, sometimes supporting, sometimes embracing (that is, either the clarinet's tone will be above the rest, or in the middle of things). Then there are moments where one string player or another will act as a shadow to the clarinet (take, for example, the very beginning, where the clarinet constantly plays a four note chromatic figure of B natural, C, A, B flat (or, auf Deutsch, H-C-A-B - BACH!); the `cellist is also playing those notes but in the score they're spelt differently (C flat, D double flat, G double sharp, A sharp, implying microtones) and at a similar, yet variant, rhythm; that figure is taken shortly thereafter by the viola, and then the whole ensemble will be creating a web of sound).



But, enough of the nitpicking! These are very good performances and I rank this high on my list of favorite Feldman discs.

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