Producing a recording of John Cage’s “Winter Music” is a challenging proposition. First off, the piece is scored for between one and 20 pianists. Then there is the score itself, a collection of 20 unnumbered pages which provide an abstracted framework which, as the liner notes to this recording explains, “are less a score in themselves than a means for producing a score.” So, the trick is to find multiple pianists who are able to dig in to their parts, come up with their own realizations and then play these in conjunction with each other. (Not to mention, of course, the obstacle of finding a place to record that has multiple pianos.) Leave it to Another Timbre to grapple with all of this and deliver a dazzling recording of the piece. The four pianists here are John Tilbury, Philip Thomas, Mark Knoop and Catherine Laws, all of whom have a depth of experience with the music of Cage and the practice of contemporary music performance.
“Winter Music,” written in 1957, came at a point where Cage was expanding his use of aleatory processes not only in the way he produced the score itself, but also in the way that the resulting score functions for performers. He had been incorporating the use of various chance operations in his compositional practice but the end result was always a fixed score to work from; notes plotted within the conventional framework of staffs. For “Winter Music,” he expanded indeterminacy to the framework itself. John Holzaepfel explains it well in his paper “David Tudor, John Cage, and Comparative Indeterminacy.” The author explains, “wherever [Cage] found an imperfection in the paper, he placed a solid note head, then overlaid the results with a single staff that turned the note heads into notes. So far, this was nothing new. But whereas in “Music for Piano” he had fixed the notes with clefs on a grand staff, now Cage “floated” the clef signs with chance operations and thereby rendered the pitch content of “Winter Music” indeterminate. So that the performer could decide which of the clefs to apply to the notes that follow them, Cage included a pair of numbers as a guide… Reading this notational system can make for rough going in performance.”
Cage’s performance instructions, referenced in the liner notes to this CD intentionally do little to nail things down in specific ways. “The notation, in space, may be freely interpreted as to time. An aggregate must be played as a single ictus. Where this is impossible, the unplayable notes shall be taken as harmonics prepared in advance. Harmonics may also be produced where they are not so required. Resonances, both of aggregates and individual notes of them, may be free in length. Overlappings, interpenetrations, are also free.” Clear? But then take one listen to this recording and everything crystallizes.
For the recording, each of the players was assigned five pages of the score through chance procedures and they agreed to an overall duration of 40 minutes. Then each went off to prepare their parts. There was no rehearsal, and the piece was played only once. Yet the clarity of their personal inroads into the score immediately comes through, creating a collective unity to the piece. Much of the lucidity comes from the intrinsic “non-framework” of the score itself paired with the guidelines of the instructions. While unfixed, the units of notes must be played with a “single ictus,” a clear attack. And while “overlapping and interpenetrations” are free, the graphical sparseness of the score itself and the overall duration demand an ascetic dedication.
What is striking is how fully attuned the four pianists are from the start. One hears the exacting soundings of clusters and chords placed with considered deliberation. While overlaps and convergences occur, an overall spaciousness is maintained. The four maintain their playing as a continuous flow across the 40-minute duration, eschewing any sense of start, arc or conclusion. It is as if this were a slice, mid-stream, of an expansive performance. What makes this work so well is that each of the performers attacks their parts with an eloquent self-assurance. Notes are sounded and keen attention is paid to resonance and decay. They are also acutely aware of the balance between sound and silence, not only of their part but to the way that the four parts intersect. Kudos are also due to Simon Reynell’s recording which does an admirable job of placing the pianists within the sonic field, providing an immersive dimensionality.
Another Timbre has been contributing excellent recordings to the rapidly expanding universe of what might still be called “Classical” music, and nowhere more convincingly than in the shimmering beautiful tapestries woven by Morton Feldman. The label’s double set of Feldman’s earlier piano works would be an excellent place to begin for anyone wishing to slide into familiarity with his work, as it’s wonderfully performed by John Tilbury and Philip Thomas. Pianist Mark Knoop, violinist Aisha Orazbayeva, violist Bridget Carey and cellist Anton Lukoszevieze now put their collective wit and grace into a rendering of Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello; they give a performance of rapt concentration and emotive depth, rivaling and often surpassing any currently available.
Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello, hereafter PVVC, was the composer’s final published work, but to say that it is typical of his late-period compositions is to sell its individuality short. Much is made of Feldman’s penchant for repetition, and his music is sometimes dismissed for it, but for those immersed in Feldman’s vast canvases, each is a labyrinth of non-linear landmarks slowly revealed, connected non-teleologies that still result in a narrative. Tone, chord and the points at which they meet circumvent while intersecting, the material developing in a kind of slow dance of gradual familiarity and reminiscence. The soft dynamic level makes it all a very intimate experience. True, allegiance to influences as disparate as Debussy and Webern are everywhere, but they are also magically and continuously thwarted, so that they must be sought out to be heard at all. Pointillism is there, something approaching traditional harmonic cadence is also present, but no standard resolution or drama on either front is forthcoming.
There is a palpable sense in which Knoop and company get PVVC absolutely right. The closest version to this one comes from the Bridge label, released in 2015, but the new disc presents a more unified string sound, even though single notes regularly traverse the sound stage. It is as if string clusters produce tones not in the score, such is the intimacy and concentration achieved by these three musicians. Those clusters often take center stage, while Knoop’s piano is recorded wide-screen, in such a way as to embrace the strings. His sensitive rendering of the score is caught in a way that is simultaneously close but recessed, giving the whole a three-dimensional presence that reveals Feldman’s blocks of quasi-development in Technicolor.
Maybe it’s the recording that separates this version from the others I’ve heard. It certainly has the unity of a performance, though its spatial characteristics seem to exist outside of any single performance environment. The room disappears, and the music is left to unfold, offering a very different picture when switching from headphones to speakers. This, in combination with excellent musicianship, makes this version of PVVC a model for Feldman study and for future recorded performances of his works.
