Gathering together Feldman’s violin and piano music might be an ideal way to persuade potential listeners to get to grips with this fascinating figure. The whole Feldman is here, from Webernian miniatures and graphic mobiles to a musical timespan both eventful and inscrutable. Yet be warned, there’s a paired-down intensity to this music which demands especial commitment from the listener.
The 1950s pieces now have more historical than musical significance, suspending musical continuity within a (never random) method of graphic notation. The results are distinctive, Extensions 1 divertingly so, but freeze-framed in a way that precludes a spontaneous approach to performance. Vertical Thoughts 2 (1963) is the mature Feldman in chrysalis, each moment an expressive stage in an unfolding process. Spring of Chosroes (1977) extends this so that the act of playing is ingrained in the musical material; the instruments, moreover, are always threatening to interact so that when they do interlock (12'10''), the release of tension parallels that of classical resolution.
For John Cage is 1980s Feldman with a vengeance: an unbroken 82-minute span (split mid-way across the discs) of imaginative refinement, fastidiously realised here. As with all late Feldman, intensity of listening determines extent of impact, the latter increasing the more one ‘climbs inside’ the actual sound, living the music as (and even before) it happens. John Cage, in his amusing conversation with Feldman included in the booklet-notes, refers to ‘an absolute overwhelming need to get into the crevices of our whole experience’, and connecting with this music certainly affords an experience like no other.'