Album insights
Exploring the piano's expressive possibilities in innovative and often surprising ways were Morton Feldman and George Crumb. This album features three early works by Feldman and his final solo piano composition. Crumb's two pieces followed his four-part Makrokosmos for solo and chamber piano settings. Feldman's approach to color, texture, form, and rhythm was greatly influenced by his painter friends from the New York School, particularly Pollock, Rauschenberg, de Kooning, Kline, Rothko, and especially Philip Guston. Crumb’s connection to painting is less explicit, with his keen sense for instrumental colors standing out.
Morton Feldman - Intermission 5 (1952)
Although Feldman studied under masters of the twelve-tone technique, Wallingford Riegger and Stefan Wolpe, he was uninterested in strict compositional systems, opting to work with all 88 tones as he put it, creating a vast world for himself. His early 1950s Intermissions illustrate his nuanced approach to timbre, reflecting his early compositional style.
In his insightful book on Feldman's early work, "Composing Ambiguity" (2013), Alistair Noble delves into the intricate structure of Intermission 5, highlighting Feldman's meticulous attention to detail. Throughout this slow and extremely quiet piece, save for four strategically placed fortississimo chords in the first half, quieter sounds are set into motion within the resonance of each loud chord. While Feldman rarely specified pedal use during this time, here he instructs the pianist to continually use the sustain and una corda pedals throughout. This sustains a constant resonance, even in silence. A bell-like figure softly strikes nine times after the longest pause, a closing section foreshadowing the refined use of tone repetitions found in Feldman's later works.
George Crumb - Processional (1983)
Composed for pianist Gilbert Kalish, Processional stands apart from Crumb's later piano works by eschewing extended techniques, though it incorporates six Ossia passages with special effects. Drawing on Debussy's description of his Images as "an experiment in harmonic chemistry," Crumb's tonal piece skillfully blends chromatic, modal, and whole-tone elements, creating a harmonic nucleus with a gentle descent into a pulsating resonance in the middle range. Throughout the score, Crumb’s notation reveals a multi-layered texture, distinguishing between drone-like sempre-pulsando layers and thematic motives emerging from or surrounding the central drone. Utilizing the sustain pedal generously, Crumb creates a "mysterious, resonant" atmosphere, as indicated in the score.
Overall, the form, as described by Crumb, presents a series of “expansive, unfolding gestures,” the first lasting around two minutes. Ascending gradually, the drone in the subsequent sections incorporates variations with interwoven chord blocks and a modal melodic figure, building from delicate beginnings to a resounding climax.
To be continued...