Here is the latest in a series of fine all-Feldman CDs, following For Philip Guston (Hat Hut Now Series, 4/94), the Piano Quintet (Elektra-Nonesuch, 2/94), and further back one of Feldman's most characteristic and alluring pieces, Rothko Chapel (New Albion, 10/92). This String Quartet (1979) is a continuous span of the kind that stretched some of Feldman's admirers in live performances. (The leader of the Group for Contemporary Music led the Columbia Quartet for the premiere in New York City in 1980, when the String Quartet took 20 minutes longer than this recording.) Yet there are reasons for Feldman's 'heavenly lengths' (he did admire some Schubert) and he even provides pointers in his own writings (Morton Feldman Essays—Beginner Press: 1985; available from Blackwell's, Oxford): ''I could find some very interesting social idea, or whatever: I'm tired of the bourgeois audience; the audience is for four movements... But I think the reason I write long pieces is that I have the time and the money to write long pieces.'' (Followed by laughter from the 1980 Darmstadt audience.)
However, Feldman also said he would not compose at all without ''perfected instruments'' and the chromatic scale, which he equated with Western civilization. His choice of sounds, fastidiously conceived at his piano like some psychic transmission penetrating the fog of his conceptual confusions, remains utterly personal. Naturally the String Quartet, with muted instruments throughout, is mostly slow and soft. Isolated loud incidents, like rocks diverting a rivulet, are a surprise—4'47'', 20'19'', 20'49'', 25'54'', 33'20'', 37'07'', 41'25'', 47'26'' (around decorated unisons) and 67'03''—but they fall into place like natural objects. As so often with Feldman the analogy is with abstract painting or landscape. Like Messiaen or Tavener, Feldman educates us in a new timescale: we hear differently and with CD have an ideal medium without the distractions of a live audience. And this is an excellent performance, well recorded.'