Morton Feldman

“This immaculately committed performance lasts almost four and a half hours, and shows how For Philip Guston, a trio for flutes, tuned percussion, and piano and celesta, defines the whole essence of what Feldman's late music was about. Listening to it is to become immersed in a unique musical world, one built from the simplest of four-note motifs, in which the smallest detail or change of emphasis assumes huge, expressive significance. Every so often the original motif returns, but each time its significance has shifted, because of a new context and the experience of what has happened since it was last heard. In that way Feldman maps his way around this unique, fragile musical space. It's the most extraordinary journey.” The Guardian, 25th July 2008 ****

Feldman wrote all four of The Viola in My Life pieces in the early 1970s for American viola player Karen Phillips: "[It] was begun in Honolulu in July 1970 and consists of individual compositions utilizing various instrumental combinations (small and large) with viola. Unlike most of my music, the complete cycle is conventionally notated as regards pitches and tempi. I needed the exact time proportion underlying the gradual and slight crescendo characteristic of all the muted sounds the viola plays. It was this aspect that determined the rhythmic sequence of events.” Scored for viola with flute, violin, cello, percussion and piano, the first part is dedicated to the Pierrot Players who premiered it under Peter Maxwell Davies in London in 1970. The last was commissioned by the Venice Biennale for its 1971 Festival, and is an orchestral 'translation' of material used in the three chamber pieces preceding it. “My intention was to think of melody and motivic fragments somewhat the way Robert Rauchenberg uses photographs in his painting and superimpose this on a static sound world more characteristic of my music."

"The string quartet has a special place in classical music. Modernists of the past century: Bartok, Shostakovich and Milhaud among the most prolific and respected. Ionoclasts like Schönberg, Berg, Babbitt and Carter confirmed a connection to the tradition and created works which adhered to the formal logic and dramatic ambience of those of their predecessors while incorporating their own compositional procedures. But there have been exceptions as well, extremist composers who rejected the genre outright, or distorted it beyond recognition. Morton Feldman fits into the latter category, or does he?" Art Lange

Sabine Liebner is somewhat a specialist of Feldman’s music. Very few interpreters succeed as convincingly as Liebner who has extensive experience in performing Feldman’s works live. These are long pieces, as are most of Feldman’s compositions. Feldman himself did not consider his works to be too long; “Most of them are even too short. I feel that pieces have a natural length, in order that they can live out their lives.” (Feldman in his Middelburg Lecture).

“Sabine Liebner's consistently inspired throughout. She plays with immense control and her steely objective viewpoint allow the tactical contradiction of the piece to communicate itself clearly: Feldman is constructing his gnarly, patchwork structure from refrains that have nursery-rhyme transparency.” Gramophone Magazine, March 2008