The title of Patterns in a Chromatic Field invites a visual analogy to the American school of abstract expressionism that sprang up in New York after the war. If we could train or at least encourage our ears to listen to Feldman the way we look at Rothko or de Kooning, we might come closer to the essence of the music. Cello and piano circle around each other, forming patterns and then decomposing them. They share a melody, and pause for thought over an element of it. This in turn leads them further away from, or back towards, the distinctive slithering motif that begins the piece.

Just because this form of expression takes place in time, it need not lead anywhere: this was John Cage’s discovery, and before him Erik Satie’s. Feldman learned from his friend Cage, and from the music of Webern, to build an interior world that rejects the need for continuity, or even pulse. Once we cease waiting for something to happen, Patterns becomes among the most eventful (action-packed would be pushing it) of Feldman’s long late pieces.

Compared to Rohan de Saram and Marianne Schroeder (hatART, 9/17), Stephen Marotto and Marilyn Nonken take a relatively flowing approach to tempo, not that they are in any hurry. Nonken has recorded Feldman’s piano output for the Mode label, and she understands this hermetic world from the inside. The sound is drier than for Arne Deforce and Yutaka Oya (Aeon, 8/09), but it complements Marotto’s lighter bowstrokes.

The early miniatures include graphic scores, one of which (Durations 2) is presented in two (not very) different realisations. The discovery (and first recording) is the Sonatina, which the 20-year-old Feldman wrote in 1946. In his helpful booklet essay, Samuel Clay Birmaher says that the solo part is ‘naively virtuosic and often unidiomatic or even impossible to play’. Marotto stylishly overcomes such challenges and leaves the impression of a composer searching for his own voice within the later music of Bartók and Prokofiev. Thank goodness he met Cage.