This two-disc set by the pianist Sabine Liebner gathers piano music by Morton Feldman written over almost thirty years, from the Intermissions of 1950 to Piano of 1977. Feldman wrote for the piano throughout his life, loved the instrument and played it himself, so the selection gives a good cross-section of his whole output.
Feldman was born in Manhattan on 12 January 1926 and died in Buffalo on 3 September 1987. His Projection 1 for cello (1950) was his first venture into graphic notation, and his friendships with painters such as Mark Rothko, Philip Guston and Franz Kline are reflected in the titles of many works. He belongs with John Cage, Earle Brown and Christian Wolff to what is called the New York School. His music has minimalist structures, though he was never close to the minimalism of Steve Reich or Philip Glass, and contemplative sounds without being meditation music. It rests on the idea of “lessness”: it does not seek to express anything and follows no logic of development, yet it is highly complex and demands a sensitive interpretation down to the last detail. The recordings are a coproduction with Bayerischer Rundfunk, with Helmut Rohm as executive producer, Klemens Kamp as engineer and Jörg Moser as mastering engineer. The two discs run to more than 130 minutes.
The first disc covers the early 1950s: the six Intermissions (1950-53), the last of them about five and a half minutes long, the Variations (1951), the five Nature Pieces (1951), Extensions 3 and Piano Piece 1952, both close to eight minutes, the Three Pieces for Piano (1954) and the short piano pieces of 1955 and 1956. Most are brief, many under three minutes. The second disc moves to the four Last Pieces (1959), Vertical Thoughts 4 and the Piano Piece (to Philip Guston) of 1963, and Piano Piece 1964.
It ends with Piano (1977), at 31 minutes by far the longest work here. It is also the only work from after the mid-1960s, set against the concentrated miniatures that fill most of the two discs.
2CD, Wergo WER 6747 2, released in 2012, part of Liebner's Feldman series on Wergo.
