Feldman, Music for Piano and Strings Vol 2 – Smith Quartet/Tilbury (Matchless)

John Tilbury's survey of Morton Feldman's music for piano and strings continues with "Patterns in a Chromatic Field" (1981) and "Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello" (1987).

Both works near the 90-minute mark (hence the DVD format), their lapidary abstractions illustrating Feldman's tongue-in-cheek definition of composition: "Do it one way and do it another..." Minute shifts in pitch achieve an extraordinary weight, the gleaming tones catching the light with each subtle change.