The Squid's Ear Magazine


Feldman, Morton (Judith Wegmann / Andreas Kunz): For John Cage [2 CDs] (ezz-thetics by Hat Hut Records Ltd)

First performed in 1982, Morton Feldmans' monumental composition for piano and violin dedicated to peer John Cage creates a distinctive environment of instrumental interaction where patterns are subtly varied in a virtual suspension of time as the music drifts and reflects, beautifully rendered in this 2021 recording by pianist Judith Wegmann and violinist Andreas Kunz.
 

Price: $19.95



Quantity:

In Stock

Quantity in Basket: None

Log In to use our Wish List
Shipping Weight: 2.00 units

Sample The Album:





product information:

Personnel:



Morton Feldman-composer

Judith Wegmann-piano

Andreas Kunz-violin


Click an artist name above to see in-stock items for that artist.




Performed by Judith Wegmann on a Bösendorfer piano 280VC and by Andreas Kunz using a Baroque violin bow.

UPC: 752156103622

Label: ezz-thetics by Hat Hut Records Ltd
Catalog ID: ezz-thetics 1036-2
Squidco Product Code: 31195

Format: 2 CDs
Condition: New
Released: 2021
Country: Switzerland
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold
Recorded at Mazzini Stiftung, in Grenchen, Switzerland, in February, 2021, by Michael Gallusser.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"For John Cage was premiered on 13th March 1982, just four and a half years before Morton Feldman's untimely death at the age of 61. Like most of Feldman's music it was written for performers whose musicianship he admired, in this case the violinist Paul Zukofsky and the pianist Aki Takahashi. For Zukofsky he had already written two works, Spring of Chosroes (1978) and Violin and Orchestra (1979), and Takahashi was the dedicatee of Triadic Memories (1981); in For John Cage there is a sense that the expressive range of these previous works has been radically reduced to create music of the greatest intimacy.

A month after the premiere of For John Cage Feldman gave a lecture in Toronto and talked about this intimacy, about the way that the violin and the piano are 'both in the same space, no business of this one here that one there at all, of course it happens, but it's like one instrument in the same space, just a little echo of sorts.' The instruments interlock, like the warp and weft of the Persian and Turkish rugs that Feldman loved to collect, notes passing back and forth between violin and piano. The score echoes this sense of equality, the piano part notated like the violin, on just a single stave.

There is an intimacy too in the naming of this work. For John Cage was written for a marathon concert in New York, organised to celebrate Cage's 70th birthday, and the title might seem to be no more than a dedication to Feldman's great friend and mentor. But the title has a deeper significance: Feldman was preoccupied by the nature of his creative relationship with Cage, the composer who had given him 'permission, the freedom to do what I wanted', and it was a topic that recurred in the lectures and interviews of his later years. In January 1982 he remarked that 'I see John very infrequently' but 'he's always on my mind' and For John Cage can be thought of as music in which Feldman set out to explore how different he was from Cage.

Writing for violin made it easy to establish this difference. Cage had recently completed a set of seventeen solo violin studies for Paul Zukofsky, the Freeman Etudes (1977-80). They are spectacularly difficult, a sonic universe in which every possible violin sound will at some point make an appearance, often before or after sounds that require quite different types of playing technique, and, as far as Zukofsky was concerned, they frequently edged into unplayability. In For John Cage Feldman is, as he put it, 'trying out another option': this music is made up of just a few handfuls of notes and intervals, a succession of sounds, consistently very quiet, that gradually threads its way through time.

In 1981 Daniel Charles published the English translation of a book of interviews with John Cage, For the birds. The interviews originally date from 1970 but for the 1981 edition Cage added footnotes, in one of which he wrote, 'Earlier this year I heard a String Quartet by Morton Feldman that was a single movement lasting an hour and a half. It was beautiful because it wasn't beautiful. Through length it became not an object.' Cage might almost be describing For John Cage, except that this music is very beautiful and perhaps never before so beautiful as it is in this new recording by Judith Wegmann and Andreas Kunz, the latter gently caressing each sound into being with a Baroque violin bow.

But Cage's emphasis on the significance of 'length' is misplaced. That For John Cage is 'not an object' has less to do with its length than with its elimination of conventional musical subject matter. In that Toronto lecture Feldman said, 'My piece that I wrote For John Cage, it is so difficult, it's the most tenuous type of supple rhythms, just it's not even like rhythms at all, you know how difficult it is to write a complicated rhythm that doesn't even sound like a rhythm?' He might have added that, as well as rhythms that don't sound like rhythms, the music also involves sequences of pitches that don't cohere into melodies, alternations of instrumental register that resist any sense of the rhetorical, and pauses that are never dramatic.

John Cage was an evangelist for a new mode of listening in which we would listen to everything with the same attention that we bring to music. For John Cage proposes instead that we listen to this music as if it were everything. While these two instruments are playing there is nothing else, just a violin and a piano. Even the process of remembering, normally so important in helping us make sense of what we hear, is altered: the 'tenuous' rhythms of For John Cage articulate patterns in which notes and figures are reiterated or subtly varied, the music becoming its own memory. Eventually it finishes and we remember: what? That we were listening to a violin and a piano and that it was quiet and beautiful."-Christopher Fox, 10th July 2021


Performed by Judith Wegmann on a Bösendorfer piano 280VC and by Andreas Kunz using a Baroque violin bow.


This album has been reviewed on our magazine:

The Squid
The Squid's Ear!

Artist Biographies

"Morton Feldman was born in New York in 1926 and died there in 1987. Just like Cage, a close friend, he was an American composer - an American artist - an American in the true sense of the word.

He identified himself by differentiating his views on composition from those of his colleagues in Europe. He was proud to be an American because he was convinced that it enabled him the freedom, unparalleled in Europe, to work unfettered by tradition. And, he was an American also in what may have been a slight inferiority complex in the face of cultural traditions in Europe, something he proudly rejected and secretly admired.

Like any true artist, Feldman was endowed with a sensitivity for impressions of a wide variety of sources, literature and painting in particular. His affinity to Samuel Beckett has enriched music literature by a unique music theatre piece, Neither, and two ensemble works. His friendship with abstract impressionist painters gave birth to a range of masterpieces, Rothko Chapel in particular. But even the knotting of oriental rugs gave Feldman musical ideas (The Turfan Fragments).

To the question as to why he preferred soft dynamic levels, he replied:

"- Because when it's loud, you can't hear the sound. You hear its attack. Then you don't hear the sound, only in its decay. And I think that's essentially what impressed Boulez . That he heard a sound, not an attack, emerging and disappearing without attack and decay, almost like an electronic medium.

Also, you have to remember that loud and soft is an aspect of differentiation. And my music is more like a kind of monologue that does not need exclamation point, colon, it does not need..."

Feldman also had an intriguing reply up his sleeve when it came to answering the question why he composed in the first place:

"You know that marvellous remark of Disraeli's? Unfortunately, he was not a good writer, but if he was a great writer, it would have been a wonderful remark. They asked him whydid he begin to write novels. He said because there was nothing to read. (laughs). I felt very much like that in terms of contemporary music. I was not really happy with it. It became like a Rohrschach test".

More than twenty years since his death, Morton Feldman's music is as alive as ever."

-Universal Edition (http://www.universaledition.com/composers-and-works/Morton-Feldman/composer/220/biography)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Swiss pianist Judith Wegmann started to play the piano at the age of six. Shereceived her education at the famous Jazz School of Lucerne and the Swiss Jazz School of Bern with Roberto Domeniconi, Olivier Truan and ChristyDoran, focusing on Modern Jazz and Free Improvisation. Subsequently she earned a Bachelor and a Master's degree with highest distinctions in Classical Studies(Pedagogy and Piano) from the Music Universities in Neuchâtel and Lucerne. She continued studying with renowned musicians including Sebastian Risler, Karl-Andreas Kolly, Tobias Schabenberger, and Gerardo Vila, and attended Master Classes in Switzerland, France and Austria. Recently,she completed a second Master's degree at the Conservatory of Basel (with Fred Frith and Alfred Zimmerlin), concentrating on free improvisation and Contemporary Music.

As a classical pianist Judith performs on stage on a regular basis and in different chamber music formations. Her ability to switch between different genres allows her to engage in classical, contemporary as well as improvisation-based projects. Judith frequently conceptualizes concert programs, taking management responsibilities from the early stages of planning to the public performance. Her concerts have been performed in Switzerland as well as abroad - for example "Bach, Schumann et l'ombre de Nico" with Alexandre Caldara (F/CH, 2006) or the performance series "Outdoor-Dialoge" with Claudia Bucher (2009/10). Cross-disciplinary projects are an important aspect of her work. Collaborations with composers, visual artists and writers foster new approaches and paths, as in"Schwarzberg" with Swiss composer Werner Bärtschi and Arno Camenisch (2011). She was hired bythe "Kunsthalle Basel" for the widely celebrated Swiss premiere of afro-american composer Julius Eastman's "Songs for a mad King"in 2013. In thesame year she participated in the production "Manon -Soundtrack des Lebens" for the "young stage" of the theater Biel-Solothurn. Further projects are planned for the near future.

In 2011 and 2015 she was awarded a distinguished grant "Förderpreis" by the canton of Zug, Switzerland, which supported some of her most innovative projects. In 2013 she founded the New4Art Ensemble. Her work with this ensemble was awarded a prize by the city of Biel "Werkbeitrag". This award she also received in the years 2014 and 2015. Judith has been a member of the board of the Society of Free Improvisation ("Werkstatt für die freie Improvisierte Musik") in Bern since 2015 and is head of their"open workshop-". In 2017 her first Solo CD was released by HatHut records,which received a positive international reiew."

-Judith Wegmann Website (https://www.judithwegmann.ch/biografie)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



CD1



1. For John Cage 44:07

CD2



1. For John Cage 45:56

Related Categories of Interest:


Hat Art
Compositional Forms
Avant-Garde
European Improvisation, Composition and Experimental Forms
Piano & Keyboards
Stringed Instruments
Duo Recordings
John Cage
Staff Picks & Recommended Items
New in Compositional Music

Search for other titles on the label:
ezz-thetics by Hat Hut Records Ltd.


Recommended & Related Releases:
Feldman, Morton
Neither
(Hat [now] ART)
Feldman, Morton
For John Cage
(Hat [now] ART)
Morton Feldman was a friend, flatmate and student of John Cage's innovative approaches to composition; he wrote this 3 part work for violin and piano in 1982 as a 70th birthday present for Cage, here performed by violinist Josje Fosie Ter Haar and pianist John Snijders.
Other Recommended Releases:
Gerszewski, Nikolaus
3 Works For Strings, Giusto Chamber Orchestra
(ezz-thetics by Hat Hut Records Ltd)
Giusto Chamber Orchestra performs three works for twelve strings by German composer and visual artist Nikolaus Gerszewski, whose music of shifting pitches, vibrations and volumes, compared with experimental sound & noise work, is influenced by composers Radulescu and Dumitrescu spectral music, James Tenney's "swell form" and Cornelius Cardew's graphic scores.
Inoue, Satoko / Jo Kondo
Presents Jo Kondo's Works for Piano, 2015-2020
(ezz-thetics by Hat Hut Records Ltd)
The third album of piano works from Japanese composer Jo Kondo performed by pianist Satoko Inoue, known for her interpretations of Morton Feldman, John Cage, Luc Ferrari, &c., here performing Kondo works written between 2013 and 2020 that apply different methods and approaches to form and interpretation, including works that incorporate improvisation and choices left to the performer.
Feldman, Morton / Apartment House
Violin and String Quartet [2 CDs]
(Another Timbre)
One of New York School minimalist composer Morton Feldman's later works, this extended composition spread across two CDs invokes waves of beautifully suspended, weaving strings from four violinists and cello, performed by the UK Apartment House ensemble violinists Mira Benjamin, Chihiro Ono, Amalia Young & Bridget Carey and cellist Anton Lukoszevieze.
Eastman, Julius
Femenine [VINYL 2 LPs]
(Frozen Reeds)
The premiere of late composer Julius Eastman's work for an eclectically orchestrated chamber ensemble, presented in 1974 at Composers Forum in Albany, NY, a uniquely joyful and absorbing work rendered in this original inspired performance that continues to bring interest to Eastman's work, now remastered by Jim O'Rourke and released in a deluxe double LP gatefold edition.
Sanna, Claudio
Compositori Sardi Contemporanei [2 CDs]
(ezz-thetics by Hat Hut Records Ltd)
An astonishingly diverse album of solo piano works performed by pianist and composer Claudio Sanna, performing works from eight Sardinian composers including his own, weaving improvisation, acousmatic & musique concrete elements, turntablism, electronics, inside piano playing, chalk-board writing and more into lyrical and experimental pieces that flow together exquisitely.
Quatuor Umlaut (Karl Naegelen / Morton Feldman)
Calques
(Umlaut Records)
Founded by violinists Amaryllis Billet and Anna Jalving, with Fanny Paccoud on viola and Sarah Ledoux on cello, Quatuor Umlaut presents their first recordings, joined by clarinetist Joris Ruhl for two pieces: "Calques" by composer Karl Naegelen using effects of transparency and fusion of tones; and Morton Feldman's highly textured "Clarinet and String Quartet".
Scholz, Kristine
Plays Otte And Cage
(thanatosis produktion)
The 2nd solo album from Sweden-based pianist and Merce Cunningham-collaborator Kristine Scholz, performing on a 1921 Steinway & Sons Model A piano, recording four movements from composer Hans Otte's seminal work "Das Buch der Klänge" (1979-82), and an interpretation of John Cage's "Music for Piano 4-19", compatible pieces from two contemporary and visionary composers.
Fox, Christopher
Hieroglyphs
(ezz-thetics by Hat Hut Records Ltd)
Three works from English composer Christopher Fox performed by the five-member Ensemble SEV, with two renderings of his work "This is the Wind" along with three duos, each combining two of a set of six "Paralogos", a solo work for violin--"Planes and Folds"--and the title piece "Hieroglyph" about decoding the incomprehensibility of unfamiliar music.
Wegmann, Judith / Marlies Debacker / Lukas Biner / Nicolas Wolf
Things In Between
(ezz-thetics by Hat Hut Records Ltd)
Featuring two pianists--Judith Wegmann and Marlies Debacker--and two percussionists--Lukas Briner and Nicolas Wolf (a duo who play concerts in the dark under the name of Night Shadow Noise)--in collective improvisations of two pianists or as a quartet of duel pianists and drummers, for seven exciting and sophisticated recordings of instant composition.
Kunz, Christopher / Florian Fischer
Die Unwucht
(ezz-thetics by Hat Hut Records Ltd)
The Die Unwucht (The Imbalance) duo of saxophonist Christopher Kunz and drummer Florian Fische was formed to explore jazz tradition while looking for ways to break down restrictive boundaries and create their own forms of expression, achieving a great balance and equality in Kunz' lyrical playing with a Getz/Desmond sound against Fische's active interactions.
Armaroli, Sergio (w/ Fritz Hauser)
Prismo
(ezz-thetics by Hat Hut Records Ltd)
The quartet of Sergio Armaroli (vibraphone), Martina Brodbeck (cello), Francesca Gemmo (piano), and Fritz Hauser (drums & percussion), also heard in free improvisational duos and trios, perform Armaroli's "Structuring the Silence", aiming to extend the performers' improvisational freedom using time and space through broad compositional instructions.
Feldman, Morton (Judith Wegmann)
Triadic Memories [2 CDs]
(ezz-thetics by Hat Hut Records Ltd)
The second of four connected solo piano works by Morton Feldman, Triadic Memories is about that reality, the acoustic space created by the piano's strings and soundboard, as Feldman attempted to expand the temporal frame of his music, heard here in Judith Wegmann's 2019 recording, where thThe second of four connected solo piano works by Morton Feldman, Triadic Memories is about the acoustic space created by the piano's strings and soundboard, as Feldman worked to expand the temporal frame of his music, heard her in Judith Wegmann's 2019 studio recording where that space is revealed by a magnificent Bosendorfer 280VC piano.at space is revealed by a magnificent Bosendorfer 280VC piano.
Gottschick, Sebastian
Notturni
(ezz-thetics by Hat Hut Records Ltd)
Seven works composed in the 21st century by Sebastian Gottschick, who arranges and conducts the Ensemble Fur Neue Musick Zurich, configured as an ensemble with percussion, a sextet, a chamber ensemble with baritone and soprano, and performing himself solo on viola; sophisticated and modern works that employ complex tonality, timbre and playing techniques.
Ives, Charles E.
Another Songbook
(ezz-thetics by Hat Hut Records Ltd)
Conductor Sebastian Gottschick presents an additional selection of songs and chamber music works from composer Charles Edward Ives that reflect this broad range, 20 mostly brief and innovative works composed between 1898 and 1921, blurring the boundaries between genres through unusual motifs, themes, gestures and phrases that appear in new vocal and/or instrumental contexts.
Fox, Christopher
Music For Piano
(ezz-thetics by Hat Hut Records Ltd)
Six compositions for solo piano written by English composer Christopher Fox between 1991 and 2015, performed by Netherlands pianist John Snijders at Abbey Road Studios in London, each work uniquely approached in both writing and performance, each a concept or style that brings something unique to Fox's music while still retaining his voice and character in composition.
Haubensak, Edu / Tomas Korber
Works For Guitar & Percussion by Buck-Wolfarth
(ezz-thetics by Hat Hut Records Ltd)
Active since 2010, the German/Swiss duo of classical guitarist Christian Buck and improviser Christian Wolfarth occupies a space between music and sound art, as they perform two works each by Ed Haubensak and Tomas Korber, pieces that make use of time, microharmonies, multiphonics, unusual tuning systems, interference patterns, and other conceptual approaches to music.
Wegmann, Judith
Le Souffle Du Temps II - Reflexion
(ezz-thetics by Hat Hut Records Ltd)
Through preparations, computers, contact microphones, gongs, feedback and other tools, Swiss pianist, composer & improviser Judith Wegmann's work transform the sound of the piano into an otherworldly instrument, set against more traditional acoustic pieces of a reflective nature, together creating a conceptual set of ten pieces in a uniquely flexible approach.
Hope, Cat / Erkki Veltheim
Works For Travelled Pianos
(ezz-thetics by Hat Hut Records Ltd)
As part of her Colonial Piano Project, Australian pianist Gabriella Smart commissioned and performs "Kaps Freed" by Cat Hope, a contemplation of composer Percy Grainger's Free Music ideals, with Stuart James on electronics; and the alliterative "Two New Proposals for an Overland Telegraph Line ..." by Erkki Veltheim, inspired by the 1st piano to arrive in Alice Springs, AU.
Kimmig-Studer-Zimmerlin and George Lewis
S/T
(ezz-thetics by Hat Hut Records Ltd)
The innovative string trio of Daniel Studer on double bass, Harald Kimmig on violin, and Alfred Zimmerlin on cello, develop focused environments of timbre, texture, dynamic and space, seemingly abstract yet incredibly concentrative and virtuosic interaction, here joined by Chicago trombonist and electronics artist George Lewis adding a 4th profound layer to their incredible conversation.
Feldman, Morton (Philip Thomas)
Piano [5 CD BOX SET]
(Another Timbre)
Containing the majority of minimalist composer Morton Feldman's compositions for solo piano, 3 CDs of short works and 2 for the magnificent "For Bunita Marcus" and "Triadic Memories", performed by one of the foremost interpreters of Feldman's work, Philip Thomas, and presented in a sturdy 5-CD box set with a 52 page booklet of notes from the performer and artwork.
Koglmann, Franz Septet (w / Clark / Arcari / D'Agaro / Turkovic / Pasztor / Herbert)
Fruits Of Solitude
(ezz-thetics by Hat Hut Records Ltd)
With a superb septet of improvisers also versed in contemporary music, trumpeter Franz Koglmann presents sophisticated compositions that interject the concept of "solitude" in the three-part title track, alongside Koglmann compositions and Jimmy Giuffre's "Finger Snapper", using striking orchestration of trumpet, sax, clarinet, bassoon, oboe, french horn, cello and double bass.
Kleeb, Hildegard / Roland Dahinden / Alexandre Babel
Lines
(ezz-thetics by Hat Hut Records Ltd)
The long-running duo since 1987 of spouses, pianist Hildegard Kleeb and trombonist Roland Dahinden, are joined by Swiss-born/ Berlin-based percussionist & vibraphonist Alexandre Babel for an album of interweaving and contrasting instrumental lines, blurring the boundaries between contemporary music and improvisation through exceptional mastery and dialog.
Wolpe / Feldman / Zimmerman / Seel
Four Generations
(Hat [now] ART)
Pianist and composer Daniel N. Seel plays four pieces from four generations of different composers including Stefan Wolpe, Morton Feldman, Walter Zimmerman, and his own work.
Feldman, Morton
Piano Three Hands, Intermission 5, Vertical Thoughts 2, Extensions 3, Four Instruments, Intermission 5, Piano Piece 1956 A + B, Intersection 3, Instruments 1
(Edition Rz)
A collection of Feldman compositions primarily for piano as recorded by his earliest interpreters: Cornelius Cardew, John Tilbury, David Tutor, Cantilene Chamber Players, and Feldman himself.



The Squid's Ear Magazine

The Squid's Ear Magazine

© 2002-, Squidco LLC