For Samuel Beckett cover

For Samuel Beckett

Composer
Recorded
Released

A favourite Feldman piece for its curiously claustrophobic quality, For Samuel Beckett seems to extract the quantum of the titular author’s dryness, his bleakness, and his brevity, and smear it across a canvas for a good fifty minutes. His final composition, it doesn’t really feel like much a ‘summing up’ – more a hint at a movement to come, away from some of the lovelier, more glittering surfaces of relatively recent works, and into a zone that feels somehow claustrophobic, but not unwelcome. It’s not lush, by any means, but it does feel as though there are more threads being woven here than in some of its immediate predecessors. Performances by Klangforum Wein and The New Music Chamber Of Orchestra have much to recommend them, but I have a particular fondness for this Ensemble Modern performance; not only was it the first Feldman I ever heard, it also seems to sum up much of what makes this composer, and this work, so extraordinary.

Jon Dale

Suggestions
E Luxo So cover

E Luxo So

Labradford
Music of Nights Without Moon or Pearl cover

Music of Nights Without Moon or Pearl

David Rosenboom, Michael Byron
The World Upside Down cover

The World Upside Down

Glen Cortese, The New York Chamber Sinfonia, Glenn Branca
Music from the Penguin Cafe cover

Music from the Penguin Cafe

Penguin Cafe Orchestra
Morton Feldman: Piano and String Quartet cover

Morton Feldman: Piano and String Quartet

Kronos Quartet, Aki Takahashi
Long Gradus cover

Long Gradus

Quatuor Bozzini, Sarah Davachi
For Philip Guston cover

For Philip Guston

S.E.M. Ensemble
Two Sisters cover

Two Sisters

Sarah Davachi
Rhymes With Silver cover

Rhymes With Silver

David Abel, Benjamin Simon, Julie Steinberg, William Winant