Performers: Vicki Ray (piano); Sarah Thornblade (violin), Sara Parkins (violin), Alma Lisa Fernandez (viola), Maggie Parkins (cello)
Playing time: 79'
Recording date: February 2011 (Los Angeles); released: 2011
This recording was just being released while I was in the process of beginning my Feldman page (December 2011), so it's very much of the same generation. This is the fourth recording, and that by the dedicatees, Aki Takahashi & the Kronos Quartet, is still available. As noted in the main writeup, I do like updated interpretations, though, and enjoy this one. (There's since been another interpretation by what looks like a Russian ensemble, but I haven't heard it....) I guess I have nothing too insightful to say here, except perhaps that this seems like a relatively straightforward piece & interpretation....
And as time passes, the latter remark suggests — perhaps paradoxically — a growing stature. This recording is probably the most easily enjoyed of the interpretations of the "late late" works that I especially enjoy. It's consequently my first recommendation for many people exploring Feldman for the first time — that is, unless they need a bigger sound or darker music.
Appending this paragraph at the end of 2021: Another new recording of Piano and String Quartet has now appeared (also, pace comments on Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello) from Another Timbre: It's by the ensemble Apartment House, who're also responsible for a major Cage set (& basically, the label's prior Feldman, too), and does suggest more of a Cageian vibe: There's a sort of cool, or even icy, quality to the Apartment House rendering, a kind of acerbic thinness that doesn't really cry "Feldman" to me. So I still prefer the present reading, and those from around CalArts in general, for the warmer (more human...?) quality. The latter have a fuller, grainier tone — rather than evoking (extending...) a sort of starkness. However, the increased feelings of "concentration" from Apartment House do bring a luminous (even ascending...) quality to this piece — & rather differently from their relatively languid or "searching" Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello....
To purchasing information for this disc.
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Todd M. McComb Updated: 16 December 2021