Steffen
Schleiermacher’s discography for MDG is already quite
substantial, and is now set to increase with an overview
of the late piano works of Morton Feldman. It will be
interesting to see what MDG consider to be ‘the late
piano works’ since these are in fact very few – for solo
piano at any rate. While over 80 minutes for a single
work for solo piano might seem vast, most programme notes
for this work point out that this is rather short in
comparison with some of Feldman’s other works. The
String
Quartet No.2 for instance has an approximate duration
of 5 hours, but this point conveniently forgets a fairly
prolific of more conventionally proportioned output which
spanned well over 40 years.
Feldman
explained this later development as a rejection of ‘form’ as
we usually understand it in music. “I’m not so much looking
for a new
form, I’d rather substitute the word
scale or
proportion.” One
aspect of the “temporal landscape” Feldman began creating
in the 1980s was his interest in 19
th century
Turkish carpets: “Music and the designs or repeated pattern
in a rug have much in common.” With regard to duration,
Feldman said, “Would you say that the
Odyssey is
too long?” Indeed, once the listener accepts the meaninglessness
of something being ‘too long’, and begins to hear the
clarity in the patterns which recur and develop in the
music, then most of the problems in this work are removed;
resulting in beautiful recordings such as this one, or
some interesting
concert experiences.
Like
some of Feldman’s other more approachable works such
as
Rothko Chapel,
Triadic Memories has
a meditative quality. There is a great deal of inner
intensity in the tonal relationships and intervals, but
taken at a superficial level one can close one’s eyes
and drift in a space shaped by ever changing musical
patterns and lines. More than with works such as the
String
quartet, the bell-like sound of Schleiermacher’s
touch and the purity of the piano tones conjure a sonic
landscape which is easy on the ear.
This
is part of the charm, and at the same time my only real
criticism of this recording.
Triadic Memories was
jointly dedicated to Aki Takahashi and Roger Woodward,
and it is Woodward’s 1991 Australian ABC Radio recording,
released in Europe on the Etcetera label, which has been
my reference since being a student. This is alas no longer
available, but illustrates one of the pitfalls with the
more recent release. Schleiermacher’s MDG recording is
very distant in comparison to Woodward, which is fine,
but all too swiftly brings about that somnolent effect
which I am sure wasn’t Feldman’s real intention. With
Woodward you get more contrast in terms of colour and
timbre in the piano sound, more sense of the resonances
mixing and becoming transformed inside the piano – much
like the dissolving edges in the colour fields of a Mark
Rothko painting. Schleiermacher’s playing is more regular
and uniform, the technique superficially more secure
than Woodward’s. This however also creates a more manufactured,
mechanical effect. To be truly cruel, Schleiermacher’s
carpet is a Chinese reproduction to Woodward’s imperfect
and irregular, but more interesting handmade rug.
Having
pushed the knife in as far as it will go I have to step
back a little. Most of this criticism is indeed down
to the recording, and it’s one of those ones where turning
up the volume doesn’t help a great deal. The opening
bars have a wide gap between a high treble and low bass,
and this left hand feature is unfortunately indistinct – you
can make
out the notes, but it takes an effort. From 53:00 or
so there are some passages of closely pitched sixteenth
notes which also suffer from some of the acoustic effects
in the recording – the ones just towards the top of the
treble clef, D-flat, C, D, E-flat, seem to balloon annoyingly,
though admittedly more so on my budget speakers than
on my second-mortgage headphones. I usually appreciate
MDG’s realistic sound perspectives, but in this case
the ‘best seat in the house’ must already have been taken,
and we’re quite a few rows too far back to hear all the
detail. Stefan Schleiermaker’s playing is in fact highly
accurate, and the approach he describes in the booklet
notes are certainly laudable: “When playing Feldman it
is vital to [ ] keep the sounds alive and to avoid mechanical
symmetry by making use of subtle differentiation in rhythm
as well as tone colour.” The score is filled with subtle
antimetric rhythms, with quad- quint- and sextuplets
spreading themselves like syrup leaking from a tin both
within and over the barlines, the actual time signature
being largely quite a straightforward 3/8, until further
complexities turn up later on in the piece.
At
over 80 minutes, this recording pushes the CD format
pretty much to its limits, but one other disadvantage
of this release is that the entire piece is delivered
on one huge track with no further access points. As an
alternative example, Marilyn Nonken’s recording on the
Mode label has nine access points, and although like
Roger Woodward’s, her CD release is unfortunately spread
over two discs, her recording is also available on a
DVD audio disc which solves this problem.
Summing
up, this is a gorgeous performance of one of the 20
th centuries’ seminal
works for piano. If you want your Feldman merely to provide
a soundtrack to your vast collection of ruminative abstract
paintings then you won’t be much bothered by the woolly
piano sound.
Critical
students of the work may wish to be made aware that other
versions are available: secretly I actually quite like
it, but don’t tell anyone I said so.
Dominy Clements
Steffen
Schleiermacher (piano) 
