(1926-1987)

mode 238

Feldman Edition 11
“Orchestra”

Intersection I (1951)

Structures (1962)

On Time and the Instrumental Factor (1969)

Voice and Instruments (1972)
Martha Cluver, soprano

Orchestra (1976)

Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
Brad Lubman, conductor

Despite the explosion of Feldman’s popularity and recordings of his works in recent years, his orchestral music has not received the attention it deserves. This new CD presents four first recordings plus the first recording of Intersection I with full orchestra — all performed in the studio, a coproduction between Deutschlandradio and Mode.

Intersection I is a pivotal early graphic score, presented here in a realization by Samuel Clay Birmaher. Muscular and dynamic, it sounds like nothing else in Feldman’s oeuvre — the raw sound of an orchestra untamed.

Structures and On Time and the Instrumental Factor are sister works from a transitional period in Feldman’s music. Both pieces explore an atmosphere of suspended time, with the instruments acting like an orchestra of tolling bells.

Voice and Instruments puts the sibylline voice in a wordless dialogue with the orchestra. Emphasis here is on the beauty of a single sound, with each moment connected to the next by a spider’s thread.

Orchestra is a walk through the orchestral landscape. Patterns come and go of their own accord as the music moves into unexplored territories. An important bridge between Feldman’s middle and late works.

Liner notes by Samuel Clay Birmaher.

The American conductor Brad Lubman was Assistant Conductor to Oliver Knussen at the Tanglewood Music Center from 1989-94, and has since emerged as an unusually versatile conductor of orchestras and ensembles all over the world. He has worked with a great variety of illustrious musical figures including Pierre Boulez, Luciano Berio, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Michael Tilson Thomas, and John Zorn.

The Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin was founded in 1946 in the American sector of Berlin as the RIAS-Symphonie-Orchester. As its first principal conductor, from 1948, Ferenc Fricsay established the orchestra’s future course: commitment to contemporary and stylish interpretation of the traditional repertoire. Their expertise with contemporary music is evident in this committed and warm recording.

Reviews:

Morton Feldman
Orchestra Mode
CD Only
Only Morton Feldman could have called a piece Orchestra; only he could have ended a piece called Orchestra with piano and tam-tam brushstrokes shimmying to the fore as pursed-lipped blocks of muted brass evaporate into the background. Orchestral hierarchies turning the ‘wrong’ way round. This is the first installment of Mode’s Feldman orchestral cycle, performed by The Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin conducted by Brad Lubman. All are first recordings: Orchestra, written in 1976, belongs to the sound environment of Feldman’s Beckett opera Neither (1977) rather than to Oboe And Orchestra or Piano And Orchestra. Voice And Instruments (1972) is classic ‘Berlin period’ Feldman: still, lyrical, lean but certainly never mean. Three early scores open the CD – a realization of his graphic score Intersection I (1951), then Structures (1960-62) and On Time And The Instrumental Factor (1969),  both pieces fixing pitches but leaving their duration to performer discretion. But Feldman’s certainty about orchestral sonority, how he needs an orchestra to sound, is already up and active.

— Philip Clark, The Wire, December 2011

The next release in Mode Records’ Feldman Edition — a compilation of works for orchestra, with Brad Lubman conducting the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchestra Berlin — will bring us tantalizingly close to having Feldman’s entire published ouput available on recording. Chris Villars’s most recent list of unrecorded pieces contained thirteen items. The new disc knocks off four of them: Structures (for orchestra), On Time and the Instrumental Factor, Voice and Instruments, and Orchestra. These are exceptional performances by Lubman and company, lacking the tentative, tiptoeing quality that sometimes mars large-ensemble attempts at Feldman. The program is filled out with a large-orchestra rendition of the graphic score Intersections I. Surely it’s time now to record Feldman’s arrangement of the “Alabama Song”!

— Alex Ross, the rest is noise, October 11, 2011

Related Resources:

Morton Feldman profile

Brad Lubman profile

Martha Cluver profile

Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin profile

Morton Feldman Profile/Discography