Morton Feldman’s late style is an enigma wrapped in a paradox. For a start, economies of scale don’t measure up. The music’s large-scale dimensions appear to be unsupported by a lack of substance and content, yet somehow the composer manages to pull both elements together in such a way as to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.

What’s more, although elements such as tempo and dynamics remain relatively constant, it’s often difficult to predict what’s going to happen next. In a very subtle and understated way, Feldman appears to take a quiet delight in pulling the musical carpet from under our feet. The music’s fleeting gestural qualities and austere manner impart a hushed, almost reverential quality. It’s as if all excess baggage has been emptied out to reveal the music’s inner essence.

Composed just over two years before the composer’s death in 1987, Violin and String Quartet epitomises some of these paradoxes. The work starts off with a two-note repeating figure on the ‘solo’ violin heard against muted harmonics in the quartet, each chordal statement an almost-but-not-quite copy of the previous one. The swathe of sonic brushstrokes eventually gives way to more sustained sonorities in the work’s middle portion. The dissonant landscape of the opening 20 minutes shifts towards more modal-sounding regions, where fragmentary, pointillistic harmonies are framed against pulsing patterns and pedal notes.

The appearance of a distinctive chromatic three-note motif in the solo violin’s high register, first heard around 11 minutes into this two-hour-long composition, is another recurring feature. In fact, the work ends with this ‘theme’, with the final minutes featuring ostensibly dissociated chords punctuated by enigmatic pizzicatos on violin.

Only four minutes separate this shorter recording by Apartment House from that of the Pellegrini Quartet with Peter Rundel – not much, given the work’s large-scale size – yet this feels like a far more focused performance. For one thing, Apartment House make far less of the separation between the extra violin and quartet. This results in a more integrated, homogenised and connected overall sound. The three violins are treated more like equals and the pizzicato passages towards the end of the work (especially on Anton Lukoszevieze’s cello) are more delicately and subtly embedded into the texture, like reverberations of each chord. Ripples in a pool of water.

Kronos Quartet violinist David Harrington once said that performing Feldman was incredibly challenging because it’s much harder to play softly for hours on end than loudly for the same amount of time. Apartment House have more than risen to the challenge. Set aside two hours and immerse yourself in Feldman’s unique and beautiful blankets of sound.