I’ve had the pleasure of hearing Carolin Widmann’s
playing in her
Phantasy of Spring album (see
review) for ECM, and though her recordings for this
label range from Schubert to Xenakis I’ve also come across her name
elsewhere in
Mozart.
Phantasy of Spring opens with
Morton’s Feldman’s
Spring of Chosroes, but
Feldman’s
Violin and Orchestra is of an entirely different
order of magnitude.
The orchestra for this work is the largest required for any of
Feldman’s works, including quadruple and triple winds and brass, four
percussionists, two harps, two pianos and a mass of strings. The aim of this
vast resource is not volume of sound however, but contrast of colour and
texture. Feldman’s work is, as Alex Ross has put it, “glacially
slow and snowily soft”, but while
Violin and Orchestra does
hold its power in restraint and sounds which emerge from a backdrop of
inkblack silence, there is also a constant restlessness and a sense of
onward flow which can take you by surprise. I’ve heard some
commentators suggesting this is music which would be a good cure for
insomnia, but I can’t imagine anything further from the truth. Sleep
inducing music for me is the kind which lacks interest and surprise, from
the composer or the performer. Feldman’s
Violin and Orchestra
would keep me wide awake simply through its constant changes of timbre and
interruptions of repose. The score is highly tensile from beginning to end,
and though the forces nudging you are soft-edged, their steely cores will
drill holes into your consciousness.
Jürg Stenzl’s booklet notes for this release are
perceptive, but Carolin Widmann’s own comments on the ECM website are
equally interesting: “Sometimes when I listen to Feldman I’m
unsure if a few minutes or half an eternity has passed… As a player,
you have to immerse yourself in the Feldman cosmos. In
Violin and
Orchestra, the violin is first among equals. What Feldman brings out of
the instrument in terms of sound and colour is very beautiful. But
it’s by no means a piece for demonstrating instrumental capacity. This
concept is completely abolished... To play Feldman, you have to take a back
seat and make sure that all expression is solely in the service of the
music.”
This piece is by no means a violin concerto, and the solo part of
Violin and Orchestra explores extremes of register and sound; you
will seek melody at your peril. Like a good abstract painting, you can often
perceive that it’s ‘good’, but may struggle as to the
‘why’ when trying to analyse its qualities. There is a similar
thing going on with
Violin and Orchestra. Feldman’s unique
voice manages almost entirely to evade modernist stereotype at the same time
as avoiding comparison with 18
th century or Romantic precedent.
The huge orchestra is used like a chamber ensemble, the sounds moving across
its surface like the shadows of looming clouds, sections combining or
appearing as disparate entities, but the
tutti rarely being employed.
The recording is very good, with the indistinct atmospheres of some
passages well expressed, the detail in others captured with refinement.
There might be an argument for placing the solo violin a fraction lower in
the balance, but there would then be a well-founded fear it might become too
much part of the orchestra and be lost as a distinct voice. As far as
competition goes there’s a recording with Isabelle Faust on the Col
Legno label which is also coupled with Feldman’s
Coptic Light.
Listening to this online it appears to have a different atmosphere; almost a
sense of menace which I don’t hear in the ECM recording. There is also
a certain amount of extraneous/audience noise, though if the work fascinates
then this is certainly an alternative worth exploring, and the coupling is
an added attraction. Listening ‘through’ the digital streaming
against CD I would cautiously give ECM the edge in terms of clarity, but as
far as the soloists go I would be hard pressed to select a winner.
Widmann’s gestures are at times the more well defined, but some of
Faust’s
glissandi are chillingly expressive.
This isn’t music for entertainment, for putting your slippered
feet up and relaxing with a glass of port, and the final minutes are quite
deathly and discomforting. As Carolin Widmann says, once you enter
“into its spatial dimension you stop thinking about where this music
has come from and where it is headed and you become part of it. And that
opens up philosophical questions. How does this music change us, as
listeners?”
So, listeners, are you ready to be changed?
Dominy Clements
