Commissioned to write the music for the Houston chapel containing works by his friend Mark Rothko, Morton Feldman created one of the cornerstone works of his oeuvre, a piece whose wordless choral keenings and tints of tuned percussion seem to echo the way the paintings’ colour-fields blur space and time, with only Kim Kashkashian’s elegantly ascetic viola offering a resolution of sorts with an unexpected modal melody.
This new recording by the Houston Chamber Choir with Kashkashian, pianist Sarah Rothenberg and percussionist Steven Schick rivals the California EAR Unit version in its sensitivity, and is sympathetically programmed alongside similarly contemplative pieces by John Cage and Erik Satie.
Rothenberg’s renditions of Satie’s familiar “Gnossiennes” are accompanied by his less well-known “Ogive Nos. 1 & 2” and Cage’s dreamlike “In A Landscape”.
Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies