'Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello' constitutes the last, memorable composition by Morton Feldman, which was completed in the year of his death, 1987.
This instrumental grouping reflects the two preferences of the American composer regarding timbre: the piano, to which very many pieces were destined, from 1950 to 1986, and the string quartet (here reduced to three instruments), used by Feldman both solely or with orchestra and other instruments The expanded dimension of the extraordinary 'Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello' is of the highest quality, written in the course of the 1980s, when Feldman's works were notoriously of extremely long duration: with the aim, according to Feldman himself, of avoiding the routine of the “usual twenty-minute piece”, even if such a temporal hypertrophy in chamber pieces, without the phonic resources of an orchestra, can sometimes present problematic aspects in terms of prolonged attention.
