Morton Feldman - The Viola in my Life - ECM: 4765777 - download

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Anyone wanting an introduction to Morton Feldman's ravishing sound world could do worse than sample this ECM album before gingerly proceeding to tougher fare.
The Viola in my Life, Feldman's... — Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010 More…

Release Date: 25th Feb 2008
Catalogue No: 4765777
Label: ECM
Series: New Series
Length: 39 minutes

Feldman, M: The Viola in My Life

Work length39:06

$3.40

$4.60

Marek Konstantynowicz (viola), Kersti Walldén (flute), Terje Lerstad (clarinet), Bjorn Rabben (percussion), Kenneth Karlsson (piano), Odd Hannisdal (violin), Morten Hannisdal (cello)
Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Cikada Ensemble
Christian Eggen
Recorded: 2001-08-10
Recording Venue: Nrk Studio 11, Oslo

Track length9:11

$0.85

$1.15

Track length10:18

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$1.15

III

Track length5:07

$0.85

$1.15

Track length14:30

$0.85

$1.15

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Feldman wrote all four of The Viola in My Life pieces in the early 1970s for American viola player Karen Phillips: "[It] was begun in Honolulu in July 1970 and consists of individual compositions utilizing various instrumental combinations (small and large) with viola. Unlike most of my music, the complete cycle is conventionally notated as regards pitches and tempi. I needed the exact time proportion underlying the gradual and slight crescendo characteristic of all the muted sounds the viola plays. It was this aspect that determined the rhythmic sequence of events.” Scored for viola with flute, violin, cello, percussion and piano, the first part is dedicated to the Pierrot Players who premiered it under Peter Maxwell Davies in London in 1970. The last was commissioned by the Venice Biennale for its 1971 Festival, and is an orchestral 'translation' of material used in the three chamber pieces preceding it. “My intention was to think of melody and motivic fragments somewhat the way Robert Rauchenberg uses photographs in his painting and superimpose this on a static sound world more characteristic of my music."

Polish viola player Marek Konstantynowicz and his colleagues in the Cikada Ensemble, one of Europe’s leading contemporary music groups, perform The Viola in My Life by American composer Morton Feldman (1926-87). A four-part cycle characterized by soft dynamics, stillness and melodic fragments, it climaxes in a movement for viola and orchestra, here the Norwegian Radio Orchestra with conductor Christian Eggen.

Reviews

2010

Anyone wanting an introduction to Morton Feldman's ravishing sound world could do worse than sample this ECM album before gingerly proceeding to tougher fare.
The Viola in my Life, Feldman's nostalgic cycle portraying the intimate web of associations he had with the instrument, is far from hardcore.
The four parts of the cycle add up to a 40-minute listen and Feldman doesn't reach for such alienated extremes. The Cikada Ensemble and the Norwegian Radio Orchestra are expert, but it's a shame violist Marek Konstantynowicz tends towards the expressive hard-sell, overplaying gestures that Karen Phillips on Feldman's own recording (recently reissued on New World Records) keeps at an objective distance.
Paying full price for a 40-minute CD might make some smart. If so, the irony of a too-short Feldman CD won't be lost on others.

Morton Feldman - The Viola in my Life

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